Monday, March 31, 2008

The Love of God

At church a couple weeks ago we sang the song, The Love of God. As I was reading the words to the last refrain as shown on the right side of this blog, I thought, WOW! how apropos to this day and age of blogging. Since I retired, my grown children accuse me often of "having waaay tooo much time on my hands". One of the reasons I’m accused and stand guilty as charged is that I read a boatload of material on the Internet and have about 25 bloggers that I read regularly. In other words, I spend a lot of time on the Internet. And, why not? I’ll bet even John Calvin would’ve spent some time on the Internet had it been available. What a resource!

Most of the blogs that I read are written by Christian folk from about every walk of life and many are also connected with the Presbyterian Church (USA). Most, if not all, are in some way or another expressing via their blog how the love of God has been revealed to them in their own lives. As we were singing I thought how true those words are that were penned in 1917, "The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell"

In this kingdom of the blog world we have a seemingly unlimited sky of parchment on which to write and everyone does appear to be a scribe by trade. Each keyboard is certainly the stalk and quill utilized by every scribe and according to the "Google Blogger" we will not even come close to draining dry their hard drive.

What is also interesting about this song by Frederick Lehman
is that he wrote this song in 1917 in Pasadena, California, but the lyrics are based on the Jewish poem Haddamut, written in Aramaic in 1050AD by Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai, a cantor in Worms, Germany. Did Meir Ben Isaac in 1050AD or Frederick Lehman in 1917AD have any idea that these words would be so fitting in this electronic age of the kingdom of the blog in the year 2008AD?

So...whether with ink, quill and parchment or keyboard, mouse and cyberspace the words below express the inexhaustible and ineffable nature of God’s love towards His people. I’ve called our inadequacy to exhaust the expressions of His love through writing.."This Blogger’s Acknowledgment":

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.