Deep Love

October 28, 2019

It was a different world back then. Meals weren’t served cafeteria-style in the seventies at Houghton College; no sirree! We ate family style, with waiters and waitresses serving tables as in a restaurant. Friday nights were semi-formal occasions; the men wore sport jackets or suits and ties, the women semi-formal dresses. After dinnner, songbooks were distributed, one of the music majors would be seated at the piano in one corner of the dining hall, and two hundred or more students would raise their voices in song.

One of the favorites which I had never heard before that time was, “O, the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus.” I ran across that hymn today and was once more stirred by its lyrics and melody:

O the deep, deep love of Jesus!

Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free;

rolling as a mighty ocean

in its fullness over me.

Underneath me, all around me,

is the current of thy love;

leading onward, leading homeward,

to thy glorious rest above.

O the deep, deep love of Jesus!

Spread his praise from shore to shore;

how he loveth, ever loveth,

changeth never, nevermore;

how he watches o'er his loved ones,

died to call them all his own;

how for them he intercedeth,

watcheth o'er them from the throne.

O the deep, deep love of Jesus!

Love of ev'ry love the best:

'tis an ocean vast of blessing,

'tis a haven sweet of rest.

O the deep, deep love of Jesus!

'Tis a heav'n of heav'ns to me;

And it lifts me up to glory, 

For it lifts me up to Thee.

Coupled with last night’s “matchless grace of Jesus,” I am again amazed and so grateful for grace and love that has surrounded me all my life. It’s there for everyone, but too often we fail to penetrate through our troubles and worries to appropriate it for ourselves. But it’s there, available, and for that I am thankful tonight.