Day 46 - My Song is Love Unknown

While looking for Easter hymns, I read through the words again of the old hymn My Song is Love Unknown, a wonderful hymn, written way back in the sixteen hundreds by a Church of England Minister, Samuel Crossman. The familiar melody was composed by John Ireland nearly three hundred years later.

If ever a song was a love story it must be this one. It retells the passion of Christ from Palm Sunday to the crucifixion and emphasizes the divine love that Jesus shows us through his death.

I would like to pick out just some of the beautiful words that stood out to me.

My Song is Love Unknown,

My Saviour’s love for 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?

In this first verse we can see the Authors sense of wonder, humility and bewilderment that His Lord would take frail flesh and die for him. Let us today put ourselves in the position of the author and realise that this same Lord, our Saviour, died for each and every one of us also.

They rise and needs will have

My dear Lord made away;

A murderer they save,

The Prince of life they slay,

Yet cheerful to suffering goes,

That He His foes from thence might free.

If ever we need evidence of God’s love for us it is in the opening lines of verse four. God watched his own Son put upon a cross and brutally crucified while a murderer was set free. This is something I’m sure that, like me, you cannot even comprehend and shows the deep, deep love that God has for us all.

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.

In this the last verse, the author writes the words, This is my friend, in whose sweet praise I all my days could gladly spend, and reminds us again that even through the gruesome melancholy of the crucifixion we mustn’t forget that this is a love story; one between God and all humanity. It was true in the sixteen hundreds when the hymn was first penned and is still true today.

I urge you to listen to the full version of this hymn and pick out the wonderful words telling of our amazing friend who laid down his life for us.

Julie Burnett