Welcome in to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

The reading for today titled The Love of God was written by Kenneth Peterson.

In 1917, Frederick Lehman, a California businessman, beset by financial setbacks, wrote the lyrics

to the hymn, The Love of God. His inspiration led him quickly to pen the first two stanzas,

but he got stuck on the third. He recalled a poem that had been discovered years earlier

written on the walls of a prison.

A prisoner had scratched it there into the stone expressing a deep awareness of God's love.

The poem happened to be in the same meter as Lehman's hymn.

He made it his third stanza.

There are times when we face difficult setbacks, as did Lehman and the poet in the

prison cell. In times of despair, we do well to echo the psalmist David's words in Psalm 57 and take

refuge in the shadow of God's wings. It's okay to cry out to God with our troubles, to speak to him of

our current ordeal and the fears we have when in the midst of lions. We are soon reminded of the

reality of God's provision in times past, and join David who says, I will sing and make music.

I will awaken the dawn.

The love of God is greater far, this hymn proclaims,

adding it goes beyond the highest star.

It's precisely in our time of greatest need

when we're to embrace how great God's love really is. Indeed, reaching to the heavens.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is Psalm 57. Have mercy on me, my God, have mercy on me. For in you, I take refuge. I will take refuge

in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed. I cry out to God most high,

to God who vindicates me. He sends from heaven and saves me, rebuking those who hotly pursue me. God sends forth his love and his faithfulness.

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