Start of a New School Year

Yesterday we enrolled new freshmen and transfer students. We had corporate worship in our chapel today. Matt Proctor will be "inaugurated" as the 5th president of OCC at our convocation tomorrow night.

Matt preached this morning, and brought a message about not quitting, from Hebrews 12:1-2 and 2 Timothy 1. His major question was this: "If the Christian life is like a race, have you ever thought about quitting?"

In the worship time, one of the songs that was sung grabbed my attention. I'll insert the words here:

Amazing Love
Words & Music by Billy James Foote
©1997 worshiptogether.com Songs / Administered by EMI Christian Music Publishing

I’m forgiven because You were forsaken.
I’m accepted. You were condemned.

I’m alive and well,
Your Spirit is within me
Because You died and rose again.

Amazing love, how can it be
That you, my King would die for me?

Amazing love, I know it’s true:
It’s my joy to honor you.
In all I do I honor You.

You are my King.
You are my King.
Jesus, You are my King.
Jesus, You are my King.

An old-time hymn (one of my favorites since my grad school days in the mid-1980s has a similar idea:

And can it be that I should gain
An interest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain—
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

Words by Charles Wesley, Psalms and Hymns, 1738.

Truly amazing! I'll appropriate Paul's prayer as my own:

¹⁸ I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. Nashville : Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989, S. Eph 3:17-19

Peace to you, my friends!

DGF