The Love of God

This has been a tough year. I lost a job in January, and then a second in May, and a third in July. I have filled out more applications than I care to recall, attended interviews, and put in hours making cold calls—all while the debt kept climbing, towering over me like a tsunami about to break. I spent a lot of time on my knees, and my poor family spent many hours consoling me after each failed interview. Yet through it all, one consistent thread has kept me from despair: the love of God.

Frederick M. Lehman was a preacher who kept a business on the side to support his family. But in the 1920s, after a series of unfortunate events and wrong decisions, Lehman lost everything. He was reduced to manual labor, packing oranges and lemons in a Pasadena fruit plant. But like in my own experience, it was the love of God that kept him from despair.

After hearing a moving sermon one Sunday evening, he went to work the next day and, while packing fruit, the words of a hymn began forming in his mind:

The Love of God

“The love of God is greater far

than tongue or pen can ever tell;

it goes beyond the highest star,

and reaches to the lowest hell;

the guilty pair, bowed down with care,

God gave His Son to win;

His erring child He reconciled,

and pardoned from his sin.

O love of God, how rich and pure!

How measureless and strong!

It shall forevermore endure

the saints’ and angels’ song.“

But the song was incomplete, Lehman had said all the words he could, but it was insufficient. The song sat on his piano unfinished. It had a potential but it needed more than Lehman had.

Lehman later found the final stanza carved on the wall of a prison cell in the city of Worms, Germany. In 1096, Rabbi Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai had written those words, which were later translated from ancient Jewish poetry. We don’t know why he was imprisoned, but history tells us that a band of Crusaders invaded the region that same year—and the rabbi likely lost his life.

“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. “

 I contemplated these words and felt a kindred spirit with those two writers who also faced adversity. One night, too tired to delve deep into Scripture, I simply prayed for a word of encouragement. When I opened my Bible, the first verse my eyes fell upon was this:

“The righteous is delivered from trouble, and the wicked walks into it instead.” — Proverbs 11:8

Today, I’m grateful to say I may have reached the end of my job search. My mountain of debt might finally begin to shrink. But through those turbulent months, one truth never wavered: God’s love held fast. I didn’t despair, because deep down I knew He loved me—and I was safe in His grasp.