Several years ago a man’s experience of desolation gave birth to a hymn which has been for me and for many the balm of heaven. George Matheson went blind shortly after becoming engaged. His fiancé broke the engagement. Perhaps there is no more bitter loneliness than that of rejection. Matheson‘s grief, instead of turning to bitter resentment against the lady who had caused it, was transformed. Totally transformed. These profound and simple words show how that happened:
O Love that wilt 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 followest all my way,
I yield my flickering 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.
His blindness and rejection proved to be for George Matheson the very means of illuminating the love of God. He may have asked the age-old question, “Why?”, but God’s answer is always, Trust Me. Matheson turned his thoughts away from the woman he had lost, away from the powerful temptations to self-pity, resentment, bitterness toward God, skepticism of his Word, and selfish isolation which might so quickly have overcome him, and lifted up his “weary soul” to a far greater Love - one that would never let him go. -Elisabeth Elliot
