We Chose Because We Were Chosen (F.B.Meyer)

"The source of a stream must be sought, not where it arises in some green glen among the hills, making a tiny tarn of clear water, where the mountain sheep come down to drink; but in the mighty sea, drawn upwards in evaporation, or in the clouds that condense against the cold slopes of the hills.

So with the life of God within us. In its earlier stages we are apt to suppose that it originated in our will and choice, and return to our Father’s House. But as we review it from the eminence of the years, we discover that we chose because we were chosen; that we loved because we were first loved; that we left the sepulchre of our selfishness and the cerements of death, because the Son of God flung his majestic word into the sepulchral vault, crying, “Come forth!” F. B. Meyer

How sweet and awful is the place
With Christ within the doors,
While everlasting love displays
The choicest of her stores!

While all our hearts and all our songs

Join to admire the feast,
 
Each of us cry, with thankful tongues,

Lord, why was I a guest?

Why was I made to hear Thy voice,

And enter while there’s room,
 
When thousands make a wretched choice,

And rather starve than come?

’Twas the same love that spread the feast

That sweetly drew us in;
 
Else we had still refused to taste,

And perished in our sin.

Pity the nations, O our God!

Constrain the earth to come;
 
Send Thy victorious Word abroad,

And bring the strangers home.

We long to see Thy churches full,

That all the chosen race
 
May with one voice, and heart and soul,

Sing Thy redeeming grace.

Isaac Watts,  How Sweet and Awful Is The Place, 1707