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;
the guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win:
His daring child He reconciled
and pardoned from His sin.
When years of time shall pass away
and earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,
when men, who here refuse to pray,
on rocks and hills and mountains call,
God’s love so sure shall still endure,
and measureless and strong:
redeeming grace to Adam’s race –
the saints’ and angels’ 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.
O love God, how rich and pure! How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure – the saints’ and angels’ song.
Frederick M. Lehman penned these magnificent words back in 1917. I have placed them here for you to enjoy as a devotional poem. They really say it all, but I’ve adapted them into a piece of prose below to help you fully understand the words, and to enable you to use them more readily for your praise and worship of our wonderful Heavenly Father. I hope you enjoy them.
God’s Love –
God’s love is bigger and more glorious that any spoken or written words could possibly express. His love is higher than the outer borders of the universe, yet reaches to depths of the most ugly places in the spirit realm. Both – and all they encompass – God sent His Son, Jesus to save. Adam and Eve and all their offspring who have all wandered so far away from God are reconciled back to Him through Jesus; all can be pardoned if we but receive the gift of His Son: pardon and forgiveness and eternal life.
When human history comes to its ultimate end, even those who in this life chose to turn their back on God’s love shall begin to cry out to Him from every mountain peak. Even in those times, God’s love for us will not be diminished. The boundless capacity and strength of His love is more than enough to redeem even the worst offender in humanity. It’s this enormous and amazing love that we in God’s Church sing and shout about; our voices joining with the angels to tell the world of God’s redeeming love through Christ.
If we could fill up the ocean with ink, and turn the sky into the finest notepaper and turn every blade of grass into a pen and recruit every human alive to serve as writers in our feeble attempt to write about the love of God, we would run out of ink and the sky would be filled from top to bottom and edge to edge and we would still not be able to fully tell of His love.
Oh, can we say it enough? God’s love is rich and pure – it’s measureless and strong - and it shall last forever! May this be our song – and may our song never end.
© Martin Johnson, 2008
