Here is a meditation I wrote for Holy Week 2007. 

   never-was-love.doc

 It starts:

“Never was love, dear King,

  Never was grief like thine.”

 

So runs the last verse of Samuel Crossman’s wonderful hymn, ‘My Song is love unknown, my Saviour’s love to me, love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be.  O who am I, that for my sake my Lord should take frail flesh and die?’  It’s the hymn I chose for my parents’ funeral when I was 15 years old.  I don’t suppose I understood then quite what it was about the Saviour’s love that was so compelling for a bereft teenager, and the breadth of it is still ‘unknown’ to me 40 years on.  But I can look back and see the amazing juxtaposition of love with GRIEF that runs through this hymn and, as I now begin to understand, through the heart of God Himself.  God Himself – whom Crossman invites us to call ‘dear king’.  The almighty, the king of heaven, the rabb ul-‘alamin of Islamic prayer and the melech ha-olam of Jewish prayer . . .   is dear – as the verse ends, ‘this is my friend’!  Remarkable!  No wonder Crossman says he could spend all his days praising such a king!