A Love That Would Not Let Him Go

In 1882, Scottish minister George Matheson sat alone on the evening of his sister's wedding, overwhelmed by grief. Matheson had been losing his sight since his teenage years and was nearly blind. According to the account passed down through generations, his fiancée had broken their engagement years earlier when she learned his blindness would be permanent. Now, surrounded by the joy of his sister's celebration, the weight of his own loneliness pressed in.

In five minutes, he wrote a hymn that would outlive him by more than a century: O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go. The words poured out almost unbidden: "I rest my weary soul in Thee; I give Thee back the life I owe."

What strikes me is what Matheson reached for in his darkest moment. He did not write about the love that left him. He wrote about the love that stayed. When human affection proved conditional, when it walked away because the cost felt too high, Matheson discovered a divine love that refused to release its grip.

The Apostle Paul knew this same love when he wrote that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39). Not blindness. Not abandonment. Not loneliness.

Some of you have known the sting of love that let go. But the God who holds you today is the One whose love will not, cannot, let you go.