The Hymn That Came as a Lullaby

On the evening of June 6, 1882, Scottish minister George Matheson sat alone in the manse at Innellan while his sister's wedding celebration carried on without him. Nearly blind since his university days, Matheson carried a private grief — years earlier, his fiancée had broken their engagement when she learned his sight would never return. Now, as his sister began a new life, the old sorrow surged back with crushing force.

In that dark parlor, something remarkable happened. The hymn O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go came to him in about five minutes, arriving nearly complete, as though given from beyond himself. He could barely see the page, yet the words poured out: "O Love that wilt not let me go, I rest my weary soul in Thee."

God did not heal Matheson's eyes or erase his loneliness that night. Instead, the Almighty did something the prophet Zephaniah had foretold — He drew near to a broken man and sang over him. In a dark room, on a night of private grief, the Mighty Warrior who saves quieted His child with love and rejoiced over him with a song that has comforted millions for over a century.

When Zephaniah 3:17 promises that God will "rejoice over you with singing," it does not mean He waits for our lives to be in order. Sometimes His song finds us precisely when everything feels most wrong — and that is when we hear it most clearly.