What Love the Father has Lavished On Us!

I've been struck the last few weeks by an old American folk hymn entitled "What Wondrous Love Is This". The Friday before Thanksgiving, some of us crazy physics majors were out slacklining (look it up on Wikipedia) between two trees on Kafadar Commons. I was sitting down putting my shoes back on after my feet had ceased to have feeling when I heard the bells in Guggenheim across the street ring. I enjoy the sound, but usually don't pay a lot of attention. This time, though, I recognized a tune that I had heard long ago. After much thought, I remembered it. I found a copy online, and was really touched by the lyrics. For your enjoyment, I'll share them with you.

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this
That caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul!

When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down
Beneath God’s righteous frown,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul for my soul,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul.

To God and to the Lamb I will sing, I will sing;
To God and to the Lamb I will sing;
To God and to the Lamb,
Who is the great I AM,
While millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing,
While millions join the theme, I will sing.

And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on;
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on.
And when from death I’m free
I’ll sing His love for me,
And through eternity I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on,
And through eternity I’ll sing on.


I wish that I could share all the ways in which God has shown me His great and wondrous love in the last 2 months. When I was a mess, He straightened me out. When I couldn't see the path ahead, He held out His hand for me to hold. When I didn't know where to go, He showed me the next step to take.

God's love to me is so amazing. While a lot of specifics have slipped my mind, His hand has been on my life in great ways. From my friend who asked if God was all I talked about to my classmate who volunteered to bake cookies for every physics final, God's love shows through everywhere.

One specific recent example, then I'll have to stop. This morning was the Digital Circuits laboratory final. It was technically an open-note final - we were allowed all of our previous lab reports and one set of online lectures. I was slightly preoccupied with other things when I packed my backpack this morning, and assumed that our graded labs were in my backpack. Realize my near-panic when I pulled out my folder for this class and realized that I had no labs, no writeups, no nothing. On my walk down, I knew that I could recreate everything if I had to from the original engineering data sheets and my own memory. That is, until the professor proctoring the test pointed out that all the data sheets had been removed from the lab stations, "...so I hope that your writeups are well done." After much thinking, we appealed to the teacher to connect to my home computer where I was pretty sure that I had most of the labs. He allowed us to fetch them, but the default file association was to a program that couldn't display the pictures that were vital to our test success. We were about to admit defeat and buy a required datasheet (at the cost of 5 points off the top of our test) when my lab partner suggested using a different program. Thankfully, the all-important pictures opened fine, and 46 minutes after walking in the door, our circuit was functioning properly. After approximately another 45 minutes, our writing was done, and we were free men. As far as I could see, we aced it (100%), so that makes me very happy.

God shows up, and God is good! Now, it seems that I must write a post about dating. Sigh...what one must do to please one's friends. :-) Until next time...God Bless.