The Song Only Love Could Write

When Bart Millard was a boy, he feared his father. Arthur Millard's temper left bruises that young Bart hid under long sleeves. By every measure, their relationship was beyond repair — a story heading toward bitterness and estrangement.

But then something unexpected happened. Arthur encountered the living God. And slowly, remarkably, love did what nothing else could. The man who had raised his fists began raising his hands in worship. The father who had caused wounds started asking for forgiveness. By the time pancreatic cancer claimed Arthur's life, he and Bart had become inseparable.

Grieving his father — the transformed father, the one love had remade — Bart sat down and wrote the words that became the best-selling Christian single of all time: I Can Only Imagine. The song wonders what it will be like to stand before the Almighty, but its real power flows from what Bart had already witnessed right here on earth — the total transformation of a human heart.

This is what the love of God does. It does not merely improve people. It remakes them. Second Corinthians 5:17 tells us that anyone in Christ is a new creation — the old has gone, the new has come. Arthur Millard's life proved those words true.

If God's love could turn a violent father into a gentle one, it can reach whoever you have given up on — including yourself.