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Song: Boundless Love
Scripture: Ephesians 3:8-21 and John 3:16-21
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Dianne Wilkinson loves her Southern heritage, her Southern Baptist church and her Southern Gospel music, but not necessarily in that order. She was born in Blytheville, Arkansas, in 1944, a hop, skip and a jump from Memphis, Tennessee, home of the Ellis Auditorium, where she was exposed to Southern Gospel music while still a very young child. She was often carried there by her mother and her mother's sister.
Her grandmother, with whom she, her mother and her brother lived, had an upright piano in her home. One day she announced to Dianne, at that time about eight years of age, "OK, you are going to start piano lessons." She did so, and her progress on the piano were so rapid that by the time she was twelve she was playing for church services. Her piano playing and her singing improved to the point that she joined her mother and her aunt as a trio. The Ross Sisters, as they called themselves, traveled all around singing in churches and on radio programs.
As a young adult a very important event took place in Dianne's life. She related the following to me in an interview:
"In 1974, at age thirty, the Lord began to deal with me that I had never really been saved. I said to the Lord, 'Oh, no Lord, I teach Sunday school, I play the piano for a Baptist church,' and I really loved church. I loved the Lord in the only way that a person in my place in life could. I wrestled with that and was under great conviction for several weeks, feeling that I could talk to no one about it. But, I finally threw up a big white flag of surrender and gave my whole heart to the Lord. I was saved and baptized at that time."
Dianne and her husband Tim borrowed a thousand dollars to have a quality demo tape produced, presenting a number of her best songs at the time, one of which was "Boundless Love." She said of the song, "It is just one of those good old songs -- like George Younce says, 'just three chords and cloud of dust.'" Shortly after it was written it was predicted that "Boundless Love" would be the song that would bring her name to the forefront of Southern Gospel music.
The Wilkinsons took the demo tape to the Southern Quartet Convention and there met Kirk Talley, tenor singer in the Cathedrals Quartet, and gave him a copy of the tape. Talley immediately took great interest in the songs and helped bring about a relationship between Wilkinson and the Cathedrals that would last for almost twenty years. In all, the Cathedrals recorded sixteen of her songs. Dianne added, "Because I worked full-time in the health care business, I didn't have a great deal of time to promote my music. I was fortunate enough to have my songs be a part of that Cathedral rising meteor."
Dianne wrote "Boundless Love" in the early 1970s, and the family group with which she sang used it extensively in Blytheville for a number of years. But, because it was on the first demo tape, given to Kirk Talley, the Cathedrals had it in their arsenal of songs. Roger Bennett called Dianne in the mid-1980s and told her that they were going to put her song on the "Traveling Live" album. Her response to Roger was, "Well, finally you're going to get that good old barn burner on." As it turned out, in 1987, "Boundless Love" was the first #1 song that Dianne ever had on the radio charts. In the years that followed, the Cathedrals never dropped it from their program, along with her "We Shall See Jesus." Those two selections have become her most widely used songs, by touring groups and by church choirs, especially since Tom Fettke put them into his choral collections published by Lillenas.
The whole message of the song is tied up in one phrase, "Jesus wants to love you; there is none above you." We will only know when we get to heaven how "precious in His sight" we really are.
Reflection:
LOVE...there is no greater or more meaningful word in the English language. It is a word that we can only understand as we refer to it in human terms. Yet, there is a love that is far beyond our ability to comprehend -- the love of God for us. That, my friend, is "boundless love." It has no beginning or end. You and I were loved by our Heavenly Father before "the foundation of the world," and He will love us throughout all eternity.
Reader Comments
How interesting. I enjoy reading about the lives of those involved in SGM. Thanks.
God is good all the time & all the time God is good.
Elaine Harcourt
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Written: 01/01/2006 
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Category:
Behind the Songs
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