O, Love That Will Not Let Me Go

Music is the language of my soul.  I can't remember NOT feeling that way, even when I was a teeny tiny little girl.  Sometimes, I just feel like there's all these feelings inside wanting to explode out of my heart but not knowing how, and then the perfect song comes along and sets all the feelings free.  All the happiness and sadness and hope and fear and vulnerability - all of it - it just bursts out.  All at once.  And that's probably the best feeling ever felt by any human.  I'm sure of it.

This is the story about one of those songs.

George Matheson was a Scottish minister who gradually went blind during his early years.  By the time he was 17, he had lost his vision completely.  Years later, he fell in love and was engaged, but his fiancee ended the engagement because of his blindness.  Talk about heartbreak!  He continued as a very successful minister, thanks to the constant help of his sister.  Eventually, the time for her to leave and marry, leaving him alone and hopeless.  He wrote the following the night before his sister's wedding:

"My hymn was composed in the manse of Innelan on the evening of the 6th of June 1882, when I was forty years of age. I was alone in the manse at that time. It was the night of my sister’s marriage and the rest of the family were staying overnight in Glasgow. Something happened to me, which was known only to myself and which caused me the most severe mental suffering. The hymn was the fruit of that suffering. It was the quickest bit of work I ever did in my life. I had the impression of having it dictated to me by some inward voice rather than of working it out myself. I am quite sure that the whole work was completed in five minutes, and equally sure that it never received at my hands any retouching or correction. I have no natural gift of rhythm. All the other verses I have written are manufactured articles; this came like a dayspring from on high.”

Incredible.

And here are lyrics:

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

O Light that foll’west all my way

I yield my flick’ring torch to thee

My heart restores its borrowed ray

That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day

May brighter, fairer be

O Joy that seekest me through pain,

I cannot close my heart to thee;

I trace the rainbow through the rain,

And feel the promise is not vain,

That morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head

I dare not ask to fly from thee

I lay in dust life’s glory dead

And from the ground there blossoms red

Life that shall endless be.

I sure can't wait to sing this one at Music and the Spoken Word on Sunday; Ryan Murphy arranged it so perfectly.  Every time I see it sitting in my choir music box, it's like Christmas!  I encourage you to follow the lyrics while you listen.  Check out your viewing options here.