The Song Born From a Broken Heart

On the evening of June 6, 1882, Scottish minister George Matheson sat alone while his sister's wedding celebration carried on without him. The joyful occasion had reopened an old wound — years earlier, his fiancée had broken their engagement when she learned he was going completely blind. Now, listening to the sounds of a love he would never have, the grief came flooding back.

In that darkness, Matheson picked up his pen. In what he later described as five minutes of almost unconscious writing, he composed the hymn "O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go." The words poured out not as a cry of bitterness but as a confession of discovery: "I rest my weary soul in Thee; I give Thee back the life I owe."

What Matheson found in his blindness and heartbreak was a love that human romance could not provide — a love that would not walk away when things got difficult. The very night that reminded him of love's fragility became the night he testified to love's permanence.

The Almighty does not love us because we are whole. He does not stay because we are easy to stay with. His love is the kind that pursues us into our loneliest rooms, sits with us in our darkest evenings, and writes something beautiful out of our deepest pain.

Whatever has broken your heart, you have not been abandoned. The One who holds you has no intention of letting go.