Dear Members and Friends,
In his book Love’s
Endeavour, Love’s Expense: The Response of Being to the Love of God (1977),
the author W. H. Vanstone has this Hymn
to the Creator:
Morning
glory, starlit sky,
Leaves
in springtime, swallow’s flight,
Autumn
gales, tremendous seas,
Sounds
and scents of summer night;
Soaring
music, tow’ring words,
Art’s
perfection, scholar’s truth,
Joy
supreme of human love,
Memory’s
treasure, grace of youth;
Open,
Lord, are these, Thy gifts,
Gifts
of love to mind and sense;
Hidden
is love’s agony,
Love’s
endeavour, love’s expense.
Love
that gives gives ever more,
Gives
with zeal, with eager hands,
Spares
not, keeps not, all outpours,
Ventures
all, its all expends.
Drained
is love in making full;
Bound
in setting others free;
Poor
in making many rich;
Weak
in giving power to be.
Therefore
He Who Thee reveals
Hangs,
O Father, on that Tree
Helpless;
and the nails and thorns
Tell
of what Thy love must be.
Thou
art God; no monarch Thou
Thron’d
in easy state to reign;
Thou
art God, Whose arms of love
Aching,
spent, the world sustain.
Overwhelming
Grace Be With You,
David R. Harkness
