I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.
George Matheson (1842 - 1906) was born with poor vision. His eyesight gradually worsened but he continued to pursue his studies. By the time he had graduated from the University of Edinburgh (MA 1862), he had become blind. He went on to become a minister in the Church of Scotland. He pastored in the resort town of Innelan for 18 years. In 1886, Matheson became pastor of St. Bernard's Church in Edinburgh, where he served 13 years. He spent the remaining years of his life in literary efforts.
"O Love That Will Not Let Me Go" was written on the evening of Matheson's sister's marriage. He wrote of something which had happened to him that had caused him immense mental anguish. He had been previously engaged until his fiancée learned that he was going blind and she told him that she could not go through life with a blind man. He never married. Although he adapted to a sightless world, he never recovered from his broken heart. Occasionally the pain of his unrequited love would flare up, as decades later on the occasion of his sister's marriage.
It was in the midst of this circumstance and intense sadness that he wrote this hymn. Looking back over his life, he once wrote that his was "an obstructed life, a circumscribed life… but a life of quenchless hopefulness, a life which has beaten persistently against the cage of circumstance, and which even at the time of abandoned work has said not "Good night" but "Good morning." In the face of rejection, through the darkness, Matheson looked to the One who carries us through our pain, through the valley of the shadow of death.
Even as I completed my second marathon yesterday, I had yet found an answer to something which was bothering me before the race. And the emptiness perturbed me. It was not until I was lying still at home (after more than five hours of grueling physical exertion and months of mindless preparation) that I finally knew why I ran. I ran because I can. I ran because I was born to run. I took part in my first athletic competition when I was six. I have never not run. When I was in high school, I would run from one classroom to the next, from one building to another. I was always running.
Running is God's gift to me. And I almost lost that. I run because it is who I am. I run because it makes me who I am. To run well, an athlete has to be disciplined, to sacrifice play time for training. Eat, sleep and breathe running. You become one with running. While taking part in my first marathon last year, these words appeared in my head, "I am wind, I can run". We become one with the activity.
Similar to a marathon, it can get really hard to carry on with living sometimes and we lose our purpose for living. With 10 km to go, my body was exhausted and both my knees had begun to lock. They wouldn't bend, I couldn't raise my legs. Every kilometre took forever to cover. I shuffled my feet till the last 5 km. I couldn't shuffle my feet anymore. The moment I stopped and bend over to catch my breath, my legs almost gave way. That's when another runner came alongside me, looked me in the eye and gave me the thumbs up.
I was touched and encouraged. As pain and exhaustion threatened to upstage my efforts, the thought of not completing almost broke me down. I didn't push myself all the way to not complete! That's when I told myself that I might not be able to run the rest of the race, but by the grace of God, I am going to complete. Perhaps life at its barest, is just about completing. Despite the pain, weariness, disappointments and losses. Across the finishing line lies another day.
Run, Sv ".+ No. 4983
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