How Measureless and Strong

Getting away from our summer Sunday themes (or maybe starting a new one), I'm posting this hymn first encountered at last week's Hymn Society Annual Conference. Though my friends and I had never heard it before, it was one we came away talking about. Turns out it's not all that obscure; it's (partly) from a Mennonite pastor, the tune arranged by his daughter, and is in some modern hymnals, such as Hymns for the Family of God (not to mention widely written about on the internet).

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the farthest star,
And reaches to the deepest well.
It seeks to find each heart, to bind
In one earth's numberless throng;
Each wand'ring child is reconciled,
And pardoned from all wrong.

Refrain
O love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure,
The saints' and angels' song!

When years of time shall pass away
And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall,
When some who here still fear to pray,
On rocks and hills and mountains call,
God's love so sure will still endure,
All measureless and strong;
Redeeming grace to every race —
The saints’ and angels’ song.
Refrain

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And everyone a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
Refrain

Frederick H. Lehman, 1917; adapt. C.W.S.
Tune: LOVE OF GOD (Irregular with refrain)
Frederick H. Lehman; arr. Claudia Lehman Mays, 1917

The story of this hymn is a bit peculiar; the third verse was given to Lehman, who was told it had been found written on a wall in an asylum after the death of a patient. He writes:

The profound depths of the lines moved us to preserve the words for future generations. Not until we had come to California did this urge find fulfillment, and that at a time when circumstances forced us to hard manual labor. One day, during short intervals of inattention to our work, we picked up a scrap of paper and added the first two stanzas and chorus to the existing third verse lines.

However, it was also discovered that that "found" verse was actually adapted from a much longer poem written in 1096 by Rabbi Mayer, a German Jewish cantor in the city of Wurms. Mayer's poem, the Hadamut, was written in Aramaic, and the translated original lines apparently later adapted by the asylum patient ran thus:

Were the sky of parchment made,
A quill each reed, each twig and blade,
Could we with ink the oceans fill,
Were every man a scribe of skill,
The marvelous story of God's great glory
Would still remain untold;
For He, most high the earth and sky
Created alone of old.

How appropriate that a hymn about the vast expansiveness of the love of God could be started by a rabbi in Germany and finished more than 850 years later by a Mennonite pastor in California (brought together by an unknown person who probably felt in desperate need of that love).