O Love That Will Not Let Me Go

Over a hundred years ago George Matheson was engaged to be married when he found out he was going blind.  His fiance's response to this news was "I cannot go through life with a blind man"  And so there he was rejected and alone.  For several years there after, his sister took care of him as he pursued a path in ministry.  That is until she met a man and got married herself.  On the eve of Matheson's sisters wedding George sat utterly alone re-living the anguish of his own broken engagement when a song came to his heart.  It was said the words of this song were written in 5 minutes total.  And the words go like this:


O Love that will 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.

"Oh Love that Will not Let me Go"  as always been one of my favorite hymns, but recently as I learned the story of George Matheson I have come to love this song even more.  The Lord used the rejection and suffering in this man's life and a beautiful prayer came out of it.  I love the first line.  I can picture this man crying out to the Lord wondering why, yet knowing and believing that he could rest in the Lords unchanging, never-letting-go love.  Elisabeth Elliot took a part this song in her book "The Path of Loneliness"  and I love the way she describes it.  The song makes even more sense when you understand that George was blind.  He experienced deep pain yet was able to seek joy.  I think my favorite verse is the third verse.  He experienced intense pain, yet through the rain of his tears he was able to see a rainbow.  He may have been blind, but he had the eye of faith.  And through that faith he was able to have hope.  That one day his tears would be gone, he would no longer be blind and alone, but he would be in Heaven where all is made new.  And then the song ends at the cross where life is found.  Oh how I can imagine George Matheson came to understand the power of the cross in such a deep and rich way.  

I know that I have not experienced suffering in anyway close to what George Matheson experienced, but I know what it feels like to be rejected and to feel in someway alone.  I wish I knew this man personally, but I am thankful to learn from his words and his heart for the Lord.  

In this chapter where Elisabeth Elliot takes a part the words of this song, she makes a statement that I have clung too quite a bit,  "God never denies our heart's desire except to give us something better".  She compares this to a tiny shell on the seashore who is afraid to give up the tiny teaspoonful of water it holds inside in fear there not be enough water in the ocean to fill it up again.  How my heart does this so often. And so I continually go back to the words of this song and to God's word

"Then he said to them all: 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it'" Luke 9:23-24