Wide, Wide As The Ocean

At church this morning I had the most wonderful experience, of seeing old people remembering their childhood. There should be more of it; indeed it was Jesus who talked about being as a little child in our dealings with God, it was that which I saw this morning.

I was unable to attend my own church today so I visited the local parish church, the only place of Christian celebration within walking distance of my home. I don’t usually connect too well with the worship life of this congregation; the people seem rather religious and set in their ways although they are not unfriendly. Today however during the communion songs the pianist played C. Austin Miles’ well known Sunday School anthem, a song I remember my grandmother singing to us and making us sing at Sunday concerts in the lounge room back in Melbourne. Well, here were these oldies singing along with all the glee of the under tens, doing the hand actions and smiling broadly with the memory of years long passed now and how they had first learned to worship, perhaps in this very house. It pleased me greatly to see this, there is some life in the old church yet; sadly that life seems limited to those at the upper end of chronology as the younger adults and none of the kids were so vigorous in joining in...or perhaps for them, like me, it wasn’t really their song.

This is a great song, almost lost under nana’s insistence that it be sung for the entertainment of the post-dinner parents of the mid 1980s and the chagrin of the suited and booted boys that my brother, cousins, and I were shoehorned into being. My saviour’s love is indeed as wide as the oceans, as high as the heavens, as deep as the seas. I’m not so certain about the theology of unworthiness, I once was but now am saved and therefore am worthy of His love, (the Bible tells me so, in Romans if you care to check), but I most certainly am a child of His care where His love reaches me wherever I am: even here, even now.

I am very much looking forward to going home next weekend, to being back at Hillsong Church London and all that home is and means, but today’s forced absence allowed me to see that there is indeed hope for the Church in this world, and in this country; that the tales of childhood do sustain those who choose to find sustenance there, that His grace is indeed sufficient for all our needs.

I need to be reminded of the great love of God, and of the promise that He is a good God and is good to those He loves: even me. I need this reminder often in my line of work, in my absence from my family, and in my struggles with a past that keeps me leg-roped to so much weight.