O Perfect Love
O Perfect Love
O perfect Love, all human thought transcending,
Lowly we kneel in prayer before Thy throne,
That theirs may be the love which knows no ending,
Whom Thou forevermore dost join in one.
O perfect Life, be Thou their full assurance
Of tender charity and steadfast faith,
Of patient hope and quiet, brave endurance,
With childlike trust that fears no pain nor death.
Grant them the joy which brightens earthly sorrow;
Grant them the peace which calms all earthly strife,
And to life’s day the glorious unknown morrow
That dawns upon eternal love and life.
DOROTHY BLOMFIELD’S sister was getting married. One evening the whole family was gathered around singing hymns. After one hymn, the sister said that she’d love to have that tune sung at her wedding, if only it had appropriate words. Then she turned to Dorothy and said, “What’s the use of having a sister who composes poetry if she cannot write me new words to this tune?”
Dorothy took up the challenge. The writing “was no effort whatever,” she said later, “after the initial idea had come to me of the two-fold aspect of perfect union—love and life—and I have always felt that God helped me write it.”
Ironically, the tune that prompted the writing of this hymn is not the music used for it today. The modern tune was composed fifteen years later in 1898 by Joseph Barnby for the marriage of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter.
May you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully.
Ephesians 3:18-19
From the book
