I have loved you with an everlasting love.
—Jeremiah 31:3
Scottish minister and hymnist Gorge Matheson wrote, “Something happened to me, which caused me the most severe mental suffering.”
What was it? His fiancée returned his engagement ring when she was informed that Mattheson was going blind. Her attached note said that she couldn’t “go through life bound by the chains of marriage to a blind man.”
By the time Matheson finished seminary, he was blind. He had a very productive life but never fully recovered from his broken heart.
On the evening of June 6, 1882, he wrote the hymn that he called “the fruit of his suffering.”
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.
The love of people may come and go.
God’s love comes but never goes.