February 19, 2023
One summer when I was a teenager, I was a camp counselor. On my day off one week, I remember taking a canoe out on the lake, to be alone, and recharge my spiritual and emotional “batteries.”
The canoe rocked gently; I lay down on the bottom, looked up at the sky, and sang these words:
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 erring 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, all 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.
(Thanks to the hymn writer Frederick Lehman for the first two verses, composed in 1917, and also Jewish poet Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai for the third stanza. Craig Ferguson said that when we write, we cast a stick into the future. I have caught many sticks by past writers I do not know and will never meet in my lifetime!)
