Seeing the Grand Canyon has long been on my bucket list. I had been to Arizona twice before, both times to visit family so sightseeing was not the priority. Besides, family was in the Yuma area which is a bit of a hike from the Grand Canyon – think Milwaukee to Superior.

I had, of course, seen pictures of the Grand Canyon, but prior trips to National Parks taught me that pictures just don’t do justice to these marvels. Interestingly, my first look into the abyss did not produce the “Ohhh, ahhh” reaction I had at other vistas. As I moved from viewpoint to viewpoint, I was still expecting that one view that would just take my breath away. I didn’t find it.

Finally, at one stop, I just sat down and stared into and across the Canyon. After a few minutes, a gentleman came and sat next to me and said, “There just are no words, are there?” Suddenly, this opening lyric of a song popped into my head: “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy.” Now, that may seem like an odd choice, as the next line speaks of the wideness of the sea. Well, I’ve seen the sea. I’ve been to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and a couple of Great Lakes, and all I saw was water. But here, along the south rim of the Grand Canyon where most times you can’t even see the river at the bottom, I thought of the wideness of God’s mercy. And that was the thought that stuck with me the rest of the day.

I took lots of pictures, of course, even knowing that the pictures would never capture the depth or breadth of what was before me. Then that evening, as I was uploading the pictures to my computer, I noticed this picture. Unintentionally, I had taken a picture of the next stop along the south rim trail and the people who were there. (You may have to squint to see them, but I promise you they are there!) The smallness of the people compared to the vastness of the Canyon helped me understand why those words popped into my head when they did.

It isn’t often that I get that kind of visual of how small I am, how small we all are, and the bigness of God. If God is that big, that vast, and God is love, this image was a visual of how deep and how wide God’s love is for me, for all of us. Likewise, mercy. This image, more than an image of the sea, vividly shows me the wideness of God’s mercy, the depth and breadth of God’s forgiveness.

As I sat down to write this reflection, I had to google the lyrics of the song to see if perhaps there was another message in that random thought. What I found was a verse that I did not remember hearing before. As I searched on YouTube for the audio file, I was reassured that my sometimes-faulty memory had not failed me this time. In fact, I found a completely different version of the hymn than the one I was thinking of. These words, written by Frederick William Faber in 1862, do not appear in the version of the hymn I was familiar with, although both versions are attributed to him.

“But we make God’s love too narrow
by false limits of our own,
and we magnify its strictness
with a zeal God will not own.”

Perhaps I never had that “Ohh, ahhh” moment at the Grand Canyon because my mind had put false limits on the Canyon, just as I too often put false limits on God’s love and mercy. Still, God found a way to teach me a profound lesson I hope I will not soon forget.

This Sunday, Catholics will celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday. Although it is a uniquely Catholic devotion, God’s boundless love and mercy are available to everyone, not just Catholics or those who practice the devotion. May each of us let God’s love and mercy flow through our own heart towards those in need of it, without attaching any false limits of our own. After all, who among us is not in need of it?

– Marge Lindell

P.S. My search on YouTube yielded exactly one recording of the “other” version of the hymn, one that includes Frederick’s missing lyrics.