Here is Love

“What would I be if not a Christian?”
“A non-Christian?”
“I cannot not be a Christian. I wouldn’t know what else to be.”

It is like finding a truth. Knowing a truth. You cannot un-know the truth.
I had this conversation with another Christian friend a couple of weeks ago.

Here is love
Vast as the ocean
Loving-kindness as a flood
When the Prince of Life for ransom
Shed for us His precious blood

Who His love will not remember
Who can cease to sing His praise?
He can never be forgotten
Throughout heaven’s eternal days

On the mount of crucifixion
Fountains open deep and wide
Through the floodgates of God’s mercy
Flowed the vast and gracious tide

Grace and love like mighty rivers
Poured incessant from above
Heaven’s peace and perfect justice
Kissed a guilty world in love

I love words. I love these words. I love this song.

It is a hymn I first learnt in EEC, London. As with many hymns, it was first a poem- of adoration and awe.

On the mount of crucifixion
Fountains open deep and wide
Through the floodgates of God’s mercy
Flowed the vast and gracious tide

Grace and love like mighty rivers
Poured incessant from above
Heaven’s peace and perfect justice
Kissed a guilty world in love

I wish I could sing this to you. I can’t sing very well. But I want you to hear the reflective melody combined with the soulful words.

Grace and love like mighty rivers
Poured incessant from above
Heaven’s peace and perfect justice
Kissed a guilty world in love

I love these words.

Incessant.

Kissed. A guilty world. In love. In forgiveness. And reconciliation.

Every time I hear these words I think of my own handicap in loving the unlovable. Each time I am also reminded of how great is the love of Christ, how deeply I am loved, and how I am made to love as he loves.

Like this:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind.

It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.

-Corinthians 13: 1-8a