Verse 1:
O God beyond all praising, we worship you today
and sing the love amazing that songs cannot repay;
for we can only wonder at every gift you send,
at blessings without number and mercies without end.
We lift our hearts before you and wait upon your Word,
we honor and adore you, our great and mighty Lord.

I struggled to decide on how to categorize this piece. When my wife played the music for me, saying she wanted to walk down the aisle at our wedding to it, I knew it was a hymn, though I couldn’t have told you the words. Digging through my hymnal collection at the time yielded no results. This was because only one hymnal I have seen in recent memory even has this hymn included. Thus, it is a forgotten gem to those of us who once have heard it and a hidden treasure to those who need its magnificence in their life.

I say magnificence completely without sarcasm. First, this melody is nothing short of incredible. If you’ve not heard it, especially the transcription for organ, I recommend you stop reading this and go find it. It will be worth your time, to say the very least.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, are the words paired with this tremendous score, written by Michael Perry. The verse printed above shows the magnificence I spoke of. The words paint a picture of God being fully and completely out of our grasp. He is beyond our praising. We can only sit in wonder. And though we try to sing, those songs are wholly inadequate.

Now it is tempting here to write about God’s mercy and how His ultimate transcendence is of no consequence, but I feel that to be a cop-out. For all we know about God’s making a path for us to return to Him, we must never forget that He is still God. He is so far beyond us, limitless in all He can give, and speaking words which offer supreme authority. We will never be Him; we could never take His place. He offers us relationship because He loves us, not because we deserve it or, in many ways, can even handle it.

And this staggering transcendence, this overwhelming awe we ought to experience every time we think on Him, is exactly the reason why we can trust and wait on His perfect, holy ways.

SDG,

-Paul Hart Cochran