The Love of God

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell.


For a moment, let's play "Name that Hymn."  Can you do it?  Some of you reading these words will recognize them from the F. M Lehman hymn, "The Love of God."  Some of you (like me) cannot see them or hear them without thinking of George Beverly Shea singing them on Billy Graham's crusades.  It was Shea's signature song.

Lehman wrote the song in 1917 while he was at work.  In idle moments during the day he wrote it on scrap pieces of paper pressed against a wall using a stub pencil.  He did it all while sitting on an empty lemon crate.  It all goes to prove that the message of the love of God can reach you anywhere, at any time.  You may also remember these words from the song:

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made;
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

This third stanza was not original to Lehman though.  It came from the translation of a Jewish poem that a Rabbi wrote during a time of severe persecution in Germany in the 11th century.  More centuries later, it was found written on the wall of a cell in an insane asylum after the occupant had passed away.  Somehow someone who was described as rarely in their right mind was able to remember the ancient Aramaic poem and write down those beautiful, powerful words.  God's love did reach the deepest hell.  Lehman was aware of that story and it fit in perfectly with what he was writing.

God's love can reach us anywhere and change anyone in any situation.  Is it changing us in His church today?  If it is not, it is not the fault of the love of God.  Sunday, we will start with this question, "Who has taught you the most about the love of God?"  OK, I see those hands and I hear the standard Sunday School answer, "Jesus."  Yes, he did, and does still, but what other person in your life, not in the Bible, has taught you the most about the love of God?  That is something for all of us to mark in our lives.  Someday in the future, will anyone answer that question with your name?