Several months ago, the dancing-on-water.com team discussed the value and appropriateness of adding to our website a new category that would strengthen the impact of our ministry to whomever the Spirit of God attracts to the site. We have labelled the category ‘Worship.’

Of course, this new initiative was not going to get far off the ground without someone who is a ‘right-fit’ for the job. That someone turned out to be DOW’s Editor, Lesley Mathews. Lesley’s life is 100% oriented towards worshiping God in ways that honour Him.

After receiving a ‘green light’ from the team, Lesley began to listen carefully for God’s voice to diligently follow His lead in the development of articles that would aid website visitors in their understanding, appreciation, and response to God in personal expressions of worship that would be pleasing to Him.

“O Love That Will Not Let Me Go” is the title of Lesley’s sixth article, posted in the Worship category. Lesley says…
The backstory of any song, and in particular any worship song, is usually born out of a heart-rending encounter with God …. No less this inspiring hymn, written by Glasgow-born George Matheson
(1842-1906)

A brilliant student, graduating with honours, Matheson was engaged to be married to the love of his life, but then he rapidly began to lose his sight. The doctors said there was no cure. Turning for comfort to his sweetheart, he was stunned when she fled. She could not be the wife of a blind man, she said.

Twenty years later, on the eve of his sister’s wedding, the shock of rejection resurfaced. By now, Matheson, “the blind preacher,” was beginning to amass attention for his scholarly writing and inspiring sermons, but all the success in the world could not cure his broken heart. Alone in the parsonage that night, 40-year-old Matheson succumbed to “the most severe mental suffering.”

That was the time when he composed the words of the hymn “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go.”

This hymn is a celebration of God’s extravagant love, with images of rainbows emerging from rain, joy arising from pain, blossoms springing from dry ground.

Matheson’s hymn celebrates a love that is faithful, not fickle, a love that will endure through the worst of life’s crises, a love in which our weary souls can rest from all the stress. This is a song of faith sung from parched lips, a vision of healing from sightless eyes.

Matheson later wrote about the experience of shaping the verses while in a wilderness of pain:

“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 ever written are manufactured articles; this came like a dayspring from on high.”

Imagining a love that will not let us go seems like the stuff of fantasy, but when we surrender our wounded hearts to God’s love, we know ourselves immersed in its ocean depths. The Sacred flows over and around us.

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.

I don’t know about you, but I can almost feel the anguish of the hymn writer through the powerful lyrics. May you be blessed and uplifted as you listen to this version by Sound of Wales (https://youtu.b e/h6iL_UInTVs).  Lesley.

(Story courtesy: askherabouthymn.com)

Friends, the Dancing on Water team extends to you a warm “Welcome to Worship!” A banquet of eleven articles + songs + lyrics are presently available.

The expressions of personal worship that are pleasing to God are not staged, forced, or manufactured, but are the fruit of hearts and minds of those who have been influenced by God’s undeserved, unfailing love, mercy, and grace.

I urge you to make ‘sitting quietly before God’ a regular practice in your daily life. Accept our “Welcome to Worship” invitation and let God minister to your mind, heart, and weary soul. Make worshipping God your life’s devotion.

Bill