Love that Won't Let Us Go

 

This week we are turning toward and tuning into the hymn, O Love That Will Not Let Me Go that George Matheson wrote on June 6, 1882.  Yesterday we learned that he wrote this hymn in five minutes.  I should also tell you that he was nearly blind and it was his sisters who helped him through seminary.  Read and sing the second verse with me:

 

O Light that follows all my way,

To You I yield my flickering flame;

Renew my spirit’s feeble ray,

That from Your brilliant sunlit day it may new brightness claim.

 

I am struck by how Matheson can name how our flames of light/life do flicker throughout the day.  Which leads me to the questions:

 

What gives your flame oxygen?

What can snuff out your joy of life?

Who are people who fan the flame of hope for you?

Who are those who drain you of feeling full?

 

Too often we fill our lives with “shoulds” and “have tos” and “musts”.  We wear these like badges.  While I don’t think we can live life as if everything is amazingly awesome, we can be more open and curious about how the brilliant sunlight of God’s love is renewing and refreshing us hour by hour.  For example, I don’t love cleaning the kitchen, but I do enjoy seeing the countertop be crumb-free and the our stainless steel refrigerator be smudge-free.  I may not always enjoy every meeting I attend on Zoom, but those give me moments to live the theology I preach because every square on my screen is filled with the image of God.  If I go into something thinking, “This will be awful,” it usually is.  But if I enter singing this second verse of Matheson’s hymn, I might be open.  This isn’t some magical way of thinking, but it is a prayer practice and posture.  I invite you to embrace and embody this.  Moreover, I would love to hear your experience of praying this hymn and how these words might shift your perspective. 

 

Prayer: God today I offer all the ways I am worn down and weary.  And I also turn my open, curious heart and soul to You to shine a ray of love that might guide me in new pathways that can restore and remind me of Your beloved-ness.  Amen.