For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward them that fear Him.
As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us. ~ Psalms 103:11-12
~ THE LOVE OF GOD ~
A hymn which extols the immeasurable love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The Love of God by Frederick Lehman, and his daughter, Claudia Mays, has become one of the most cherished hymns over time.
MercyMe, a well-known Christian band, did a rendition.
This hymn came after a challenging time in the life of the author.
Frederick M. Lehman, a German gentile, was a businessman in California that lost everything through business reverses. He was forced to spend his working hours in manual labor, working in a Pasadena packing house packing oranges and lemons into wooden crates. Not an ideal environment for writing love songs, but this was the environment the Lord chose to use.
According to Lehman, he and his daughter collaborated and wrote the lyrics and melody of this hymn but was still in need of a third verse.
It was then that he remembered a poem someone had given him some time before. Hunting around, he found the poem printed on a card, which he had used as a bookmark. As Mr. Lehman read the words, his heart was thrilled by the adequate picture of God’s love they pictured. He then noticed this writing on the bottom of the card:
“These words were found written on a cell wall in a prison some 200 years ago. It is not known why the prisoner was incarcerated; neither is it known if the words were original or if he had heard them somewhere and had decided to put them in a place where he could be reminded of the greatness of God’s love - whatever the circumstances, he wrote them on the wall of his prison cell. In due time, he died and the men who had the job of repainting his cell were impressed by the words. Before their paint brushes had obliterated them, one of the men jotted them down and thus they were preserved.”
The patient in the insane asylum had most likely heard this poem in a Jewish liturgy, perhaps as a child or young adult before entering the asylum. Presumably, during a moment of reminiscent lucidity, the patient then scribbled the words on the wall.
Frederick Lehman and his daughter then took the words from the asylum and adapted them to create the lyrics we have today.
~ 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.
The story of this hymn testifies that indeed God’s love goes “beyond the highest star, and reaches to the lowest hell”, even into the darkness of an asylum cell.
Those words of God’s love journeyed from a Hebrew cantor, down through the centuries, to a Gentile hymn writer, and now to all Christendom. The words traveled from Aramaic to German to English and beyond.
The love of God knows no limits. It is far greater than any could ever tell!
5 фев 2023
