Thoughts on love
In church today, the pastor was talking about the amazing love God has for us. He said that Paul used a "cosmic" description for the readers of Ephesians to describe the love of God. "How wide, how long, how deep, how high". This was used in the day to describe the universe. He then described how long it would take to get to various places in the universe travelling at the speed of light. The next galaxy would take millions of years to reach. This then, is a description of the beginning of God's love for us.
It brought to mind the words by Fredrick M. Lehman who wrote "The Love of God" based on a Jewish poem about the same topic.
The following information is from http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/l/o/loveofgo.htm:
bio("Frederick M. Lehman","l/e/lehman_fm")
Frederick M. Lehman; he wrote this song in 1917 in Pasadena, California, and it was published in Songs That Are Different, Volume 2, 1919. The lyrics are based on the Jewish poem Haddamut, written in Aramaic in 1050 by Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai, a cantor in Worms, Germany; they have been translated into at least 18 languages.
One day, during short intervals of inattention to our work, we picked up a scrap of paper and, seated upon an empty lemon box pushed against the wall, with a stub pencil, added the (first) two stanzas and chorus of the song…Since the lines (3rd stanza from the Jewish poem) had been found penciled on the wall of a patient’s room in an insane asylum after he had been carried to his grave, the general opinion was that this inmate had written the epic in moments of sanity.
Frederick M. Lehman, “History of the Song, The Love of God,” 1948
bio("Frederick M. Lehman","l/e/lehman_fm")
Frederick M. Lehman; he wrote this song in 1917 in Pasadena, California, and it was published in Songs That Are Different, Volume 2, 1919. The lyrics are based on the Jewish poem Haddamut, written in Aramaic in 1050 by Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai, a cantor in Worms, Germany; they have been translated into at least 18 languages.
One day, during short intervals of inattention to our work, we picked up a scrap of paper and, seated upon an empty lemon box pushed against the wall, with a stub pencil, added the (first) two stanzas and chorus of the song…Since the lines (3rd stanza from the Jewish poem) had been found penciled on the wall of a patient’s room in an insane asylum after he had been carried to his grave, the general opinion was that this inmate had written the epic in moments of sanity.
Frederick M. Lehman, “History of the Song, The Love of God,” 1948
This is the last verse. May you grasp this week a little of this great love.
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.
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