Musical Notes

Hello OCBC family,
 “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” (Jeremiah 31:3. Last Sunday, during our evening worship service, as congregation, we sang the hymn “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go”.  This is not a too familiar hymn for many members, but we learned it and enjoy the powerful lyrics of this lovely hymn.

Who wrote this hymn? A man called George Matheson, a Scotch minister. When he was a teenager, he learned that his poor eyesight was deteriorating further. His plans, nevertheless, were to enroll in Glasgow University; sadly, at that time, during his studies for ministry, he became totally blind. His sister helped him study. But his spirit collapsed when his fiancée told him that she was not willing to marry a blind man, broke the engagement and returned his ring.

He never married, and the pain of that rejection never left him. Several years later, his sister shared with him that now she is engaged and to be married soon. He was happy for his siter, but his own pain for the rejection of his former fiancée returned to him. During this sad moment, he wrote,
O Love that will 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.

George Matheson tells us how this hymn was written.
“It was composed with extreme rapidity, and I felt myself rather in a position of one who was being dictated to than of an original artist. I was suffering from extreme mental destress, and the hymn was the fruit of pain.”
In times of pain or sorrow, you might use Matheson’s hymn to find comfort.

O cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to hide from thee;
I lay in dust life's glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red,
Life that shall endless be.
​
In His service,
Israel