George Beverly Shea could have had an easily popular music career. After all, he had 500 vocal solos recorded on more than seventy albums. He was nominated for ten Grammy Awards, and actually won one in 1966. But fame and popularity aside, Shea chose to serve God instead.
You would probably be more familiar with “I’d Rather Have Jesus”, a hymn he wrote the music for. But with the hymn “The Wonder of It All,” Shea claims both authorship and melody.
“I challenge you to write a song with this title”
The year was 1955. Shea was aboard S.S. United States ocean liner, en route to Scotland. It was not a regular trip to sight-see and relax. He was travelling with Billy Graham’s evangelistic team as the gospel singer, a crucial role of communicating messages of salvation through music.
He was on deck one evening with his son when he noticed the president of the New York publishing company aboard as well. They struck up a conversation, and the man was keen enough to share his interest for church music, particularly hymns. Though the man was not a Christian, he continued on with the conversation asking Shea to relate to him his experiences in the meetings Billy Graham was holding.
To this query, Shea responded, “What happens then never becomes commonplace, watching people by the hundreds come forward. Oh, if you could just see the wonder of it all!”
At this answer, the man posed a challenge, “I challenge you to write a song with this title.” At the same time, handing him a piece of paper that had these words written in bold letters, The Wonder of It All.
That same evening, Shea lived up to the challenge and penned this simple but exquisite hymn.
The wonder of all wonders is God’s love for us
The hymn starts out with what we all can relate to. Shea used nature, one of the most incomprehensible things in life that we will always wonder about. The simplicity of sunrise, the sunset, the seasons, and all the marvelous features of the space that we enjoy from day to day is a reason to revel, to awe, to wonder.
But then he transitions at the end of the stanza and declaims, “But the wonder of wonders that thrills my soul, is the wonder that God loves me!”
Have you ever wondered at how much God loves you? I have. But just like Robert Robinson in the hymn “Come Thou Fount, I get “lost in wonder, love and praise.”
Pen cannot describe God’s love for man, but I like how this author described it:
All our thoughts and imaginations will not alter in the least any part of the plan of redemption devised from all eternity…God so loved the world that he determined to give a gift beyond all computation, and make manifest how immeasurable was his love. The gift of God would be a wonder to all worlds, to all created intelligences, ever enlarging their ideas of what God’s love was in its infinity and greatness. Contemplation of this love would uproot from the heart all selfishness, and so transform the soul that men would cherish generosity, practice self-denial, and imitate the example of God. God so loved the world that he gave heaven’s best gift, in order that the most guilty transgressor should not be deferred from coming to Christ, however great his sin, and be enabled to ask for pardon at a throne of mercy.
Signs of the Times, Feb 5, 1894 “God’s Love Unmeasured” by Ellen G. White
Indeed, this is wonder of wonders that we will never be able to exhaust!
See George Beverly Shea sing this hymn!
Like this article? Share it!
Explore more hymns:
