I’ve always loved music. From the time I was a little girl sitting with my hymnal in church, probably upside down, definitely on the wrong page, I loved to “sing along” with the rest of the congregation. The same is true today. Whether joining in worship on a Sunday morning or singing quietly around the house while I clean, there is something about music that brings my soul joy and peace.
In the beautiful Lenten Hymn, My Song is Love Unknown (LSB 430), we get to sing a different kind of song. In a sense, the music is our lives and the words tell of a love that we really can’t describe. It’s the kind of love that is poured out for the unlovable. It’s a love that really is beyond our comprehension and understanding. The music fills in some of the gaps that can’t be simply explained in words:
My Song is Love Unknown, my Savior’s Love to me,
Love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be.
Oh, who am I that for my sake
My Lord should take frail flesh and die. (vs 1; Samuel Crossman – Public Domain)
The hymn continues about how much this love just doesn’t make sense. He gave up everything. He was, in one sense, a homeless wanderer. People who praised Him one day, turned on Him to kill him the next. The innocent got killed; the guilty went free.
All because of love.
His love for us.
Romans 5:6-8 describes this confusing, but amazing truth: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
When you hear the Gospel in that sense, as truly good news, there is every reason to sing—to sing of this divine story that draws us in to know “a love that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19). I love that description and it fits so well with this hymn. The love is incomprehensible and yet God longs to make that unknowable love known to us, that we truly may be “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19). Now, we get the beautiful joy of making that love known to those around us—to sing the song loud and proud.
Here might I stay and sing, no story so divine!
Never was love, dear King, never was grief like Thine.
This is my friend, in whose sweet praise
I all my days could gladly spend! (vs 7)
God, thank you for making known your love that surpasses all knowledge. Root and establish me in that love so that I may be filled with all Your fullness. Fill me so that Your love may flow out of my life as a song to the world around me that they too may know this amazing love!
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