06/06/2026
Hymn 470 There’s a wideness in God’s mercy
Both our first lesson and the Gospel show us the wideness of God’s mercy, from the global to the personal: through Abraham to the whole world, and Jesus says “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” just before healing individual women. Frederick Faber (1814-1863), the text’s author, was a priest who lived and worked in inner-city London; his goal in hymn-writing was to provide songs that working people would willingly sing. The tune was named for Henry Ward Beecher, the 19th-century Congregational minister, who was so well known as a fierce abolitionist and popular preacher that his modern biography is called The Most Famous Man in America.
--Donna Wessel Walker
There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea;
there’s a kindness in his justice, which is more than liberty.
There is welcome for the sinner, and more graces for the good;
there is mercy with the Savior; there is healing in his blood.
There is no place where earth’s sorrows are more felt than up in heaven;
there is no place where earth’s failings have such kindly judgment given.
There is plentiful redemption in the blood that has been shed;
there is joy for all the members in the sorrows of the Head.
For the love of God is broader than the measure of the mind,
and the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more faithful, we should take him at his word,
and our life would be thanksgiving for the goodness of the Lord.
- Frederick William Faber (1814-1863), alt,
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