Everlasting Love
02.14.10
On Valentine’s Day, we celebrate the most intimate of human relationships. One of the enduring symbols of love in our culture is the wedding band, a circlet of metal, without beginning or end, that represents love as eternal, neverending. For some, however, Valentine’s Day opens old wounds. I once knew a woman who suffered from deep depression every Valentine’s Day. She had lost her husband years before, and always after, Valentine’s Day reminded her of that loss.
On the night before his sister’s wedding, Scottish minister George Matheson was also reminded of love lost. He had been engaged to be married, but his fiance, unable to cope with the blindness that had afflicted Matheson from his youth, broke off the engagement and left him heartbroken. For years, he had lived with his sister, who took care of him, helping him with his studies, meeting his daily needs. Now she was leaving him to be married, and despite his joy for her, he could not help but feel sorry for himself (Asiado).
That night, all the old pain, all the old sense of loss and abandonment came back to him. But in the midst of his depression, Matheson remembered that God loved him with an everlasting love (Jer. 31:3). In a few moments, he penned the words to this, now famous, hymn (Asiado):
O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.
O light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.
O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.
O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be. (“O Love”)
Works Cited
Asiado, Tel. “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go.” Suite101.com. 14 Mar. 2007. Web. 12 Feb. 2010.
“O Love That Will Not Let Me Go.” RUF Hymnbook Online Hymn Resource. Reformed University Fellowship. Web. 27 Jan. 2010.