Let Earth and Heaven Combine
A hymn for Christmas, wondering at the mystery of the infinity of God contained within the tiny frame of a new-born child.
A hymn for Christmas, wondering at the mystery of the infinity of God contained within the tiny frame of a new-born child.
In the eighth century, monk John of the Mar Saba monastery near Bethlehem wrote a hymn to Mary, in which he remembered in wonder how the infinite God became a tiny child, making her narrow womb ‘wider than the heavens’. The same paradox struck Charles Wesley, and it prompted him to write a hymn of his own.
God With Us
LET earth and heaven combine,
Angels and men agree,
To praise in songs divine
Th’ incarnate Deity;
Our God contracted to a span,
Incomprehensibly made man.
He laid his glory by,
He wrapp’d him in our clay
Unmark’d by human eye,
The latent Godhead lay;
Infant of days he here became,
And bore the mild Immanuel’s Name.
Unsearchable the love
That hath the Saviour brought;
The grace is far above
Or man or angel’s thought.
Suffice for us that God, we know,
Our God, is manifest below.
He deigns in flesh t’ appear,
Widest extremes to join;
To bring our vileness near,
And make us all divine:
And we the life of God shall know;
For God is manifest below.
Made perfect first in love,
And sanctified by grace,
We shall from earth remove,
And see his glorious face:
Then shall his love be fully show’d,
And man shall then be lost in God.