The Love of God

Frederick Lehman was a businessman in California that lost everything in several business deals that had gone wrong. He began working long days packing oranges and lemons into wooden crates in an effort to get back on his feet.

One Sunday he heard such a powerful sermon on the love of God that he had trouble falling asleep that night. The following day as he was packing oranges and lemons, he began to write lyrics for the first two verses on scraps of paper and pieces of broken crates. That evening, he began to put together the melody on his piano. But there was a problem. In those days, songs were considered incomplete if there were less than three stanzas!

Lehman then remembered a card with a poem that someone had given him years ago. At the bottom of the card was written, “These words were found written on a cell wall in a prison some 200 years ago. It is not known why the prisoner was incarcerated; neither is it known if the words were original or if he had heard them somewhere and had decided to put them in a place where he could be reminded of the greatness of God’s love - whatever the circumstances, he wrote them on the wall of his prison cell…” As Lehman read the poem he found that the words fit the melody perfectly! The Love of God was now complete!

Part of the last verse reads, “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.” Lehman’s lyrics along with the words penned by the unknown prisoner reminds us of how pure, strong, and deep God’s love for us is. Nothing can ever separate us from His love!

“If God be for us, who can be against us?…For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:31, 38-39 (KJV).