This moving hymn feels like watching an ocean roll, as the metaphor goes. Its slow statement Christ’s profound love can be happy and ecstatic, but it’s in daily living, in common struggle, and in grief that we can feel the soul-stirring depth of his unchanging love for us.

Samuel Trevor Francis (1834-1925), a London businessman, wrote the words. Welshman Thomas John Williams (1869-1944) wrote the melody. Williams was an insurance salesman, so this popular hymn comes to us from the business sect of Christendom.

1 O the deep, deep love of Jesus!
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free,
rolling as a mighty ocean
in its fullness over me.
Underneath me, all around me,
is the current of thy love;
leading onward, leading homeward,
to thy glorious rest above.

2 O the deep, deep love of Jesus!
Spread his praise from shore to shore;
how he loveth, ever loveth,
changeth never, nevermore;
how he watches o’er his loved ones,
died to call them all his own;
how for them he intercedeth,
watcheth o’er them from the throne.

3 O the deep, deep love of Jesus!
Love of ev’ry love the best:
’tis an ocean vast of blessing,
’tis a haven sweet of rest.
O the deep, deep love of Jesus!
‘Tis a heav’n of heav’ns to me;
and it lifts me up to glory,
for it lifts me up to thee.