The Love That Refused to Let Go

On the evening of June 6, 1882, Scottish minister George Matheson sat alone while his sister's wedding celebration carried on without him. Matheson had been going blind since his university years, and by now the darkness was nearly complete. According to his own account, something about that night — the joy surrounding him, the loneliness within him — triggered what he called "the most severe mental suffering." In five minutes, barely pausing between lines, he wrote the hymn O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go.

"O Love that wilt not let me go, I rest my weary soul in Thee; I give Thee back the life I owe, that in Thine ocean depths its flow may richer, fuller be."

What poured out of Matheson that night was not a theology lecture. It was a man who had lost nearly everything — his sight, his independence, his dreams of a normal life — discovering that one Love remained stubbornly, impossibly present. The Almighty had not explained the suffering. He had simply refused to leave.

That is the love Paul describes in Romans 8 — a love from which nothing in all creation can separate us. Not blindness. Not loneliness. Not the sound of someone else's happiness when your own heart is breaking.

Some of you are sitting in your own dark evening right now. The same Love that held George Matheson holds you. And it will not let go.