O Perfect Love is a hymn about marriage?

I starting to think I'm hopelessly naive.

This evening I get out my Rejoice! hymn book* for my daily half-hour of hymn-playing, open up to O Perfect Love and start playing and quietly singing the words. For the umpteenth time the question flashes into my mind as to why the committee decided to put this hymn all the way at the back, right next to a version of Psalm 128 and Happy the Home that Welcomes You, Lord Jesus - indeed, under the "Christian Marriage and the Home" section. I always play it right before launching into The Church's One Foundation...

And then it dawned on me.

O perfect Love,

all human thought transcending

lowly we kneel

in prayer before Your throne

that theirs may be

the love that knows no ending

whom, Lord, forevermore

You join in one.

Really, "joining in one" should have sort of given it away. Except that I was thinking more along these lines:

Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf. ~ 1 Corinthians 10:16-18

...rather than along these lines....

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. ~ Genesis 2:24

My mistake aside, I hope you all had a wonderful Easter, giving thanks to the One whose perfect love and sacrifice has not only given the example and foundation for Christian marriage but brought together sinners from every nation into one body, the church and bride of Christ!

*Hymn book commissioned by the PCA(ustralia) in the 1980s; that's where I found the version of Be Thou My Vision that Mrs. CarpeBanana liked.

Quick note

If you're interested in home-schooling, you might like to read Mr. Bird's interview of me on his blog. (Here's hoping that I didn't make any grammatical errors. That would be distinctly embarrassing...) While you're there, be sure to look around - he writes about things in a very thoughtful way.