GOD’S MEASURELESS LOVE

Do you understand it? I admit it is beyond understanding—God’s love for us—for me and for you!

‘Gods’ of wood and stone don’t love their worshipers let alone know who they are. But our Creator God values relationship with us and is vitally interested in each of us to the point He knows our names and the number of hairs on each head!

Approximately 100 years ago, Frederick M. Lehman heard a sermon about the love of God that so moved him, he wrote down the words of a poem quoted at the sermon’s conclusion. The words were laid aside and forgotten for some time. Then Mr. Lehman, a businessman, suffered financial reversals and was forced to do hard manual labor packing crates of produce.

During that time, he began writing about God’s great unexplained love for mankind and he remembered that poem he had scribbled long ago. He found it and inserted the words of that poem after the two verses he had already written. The meter fit perfectly, as if God had planned it. His song was complete. Later, he learned the poem was written nearly a thousand years earlier by a Jewish songwriter writing about God’s expansive love.

Now the rest of the story—this poem, included as the third verse of The Love of God, was actually found written on a cell wall. Why the prisoner was incarcerated we do not know, but after he passed the cell was being repainted and the painters discovered these words on the wall, so they jotted them down for posterity!

Could we with ink the ocean fill and were the skies of parchment made,
were ev’ry stalk on earth a quill and ev’ry 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.

Refrain: O love of God, how rich and pure! How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure the saints’ and angels’ song!

God’s love surpasses our ability to describe it or understand it. His love remains sufficient to encourage the prisoner, sustain the laborer, and draw every nationality of people to Him. Ponder it and, yes, accept it.

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1)

+ Campus Pastor Sherree Lane

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