Come, Thou Fount

Last night at church, my mom asked the congregation if there were any particular songs we wanted to sing. As I flipped through my hymnal, I found one that I always liked when I was younger. I hadn’t heard it in a while because in the past year or so I’ve been on this thing where I don’t want to sing songs that I don’t know the exact meaning of and “Come, Thou Fount” was one of those songs. Written by Robert Robinson in 1758, it has some terminology that’s a little bit difficult. Therefore, I think what I liked most about it as a child was the tune more so than the words.  Anyway, as I gazed at song #11 in my hymnal, I found myself wanting to hear it again.

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing, Tune my heart to sing thy grace;

Streams of mercy, never ceasing, Call for songs of loudest praise:

Teach me some melodious sonnet, Sung by flaming tongues above;

Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it, Mount of thy redeeming love.

That part, of course, is pretty straightforward –and beautiful. God truly is the source of every blessing and He is worthy to be praised. Simple and truthful. I love it.

 

For the longest time, I wished that the song would just stop there or something because it was the second verse that ruined it for me:

 

Here I raise my Ebenezer; Hither by Thy I’m come;

And I hope, by Thy good pleasure, Safely to arrive at home:

Jesus sought me when a stranger, Wand’ring from the fold of God;

He, to rescue me from danger, Interposed His precious blood.

What was that, now? “Here to raise my Ebenezer”? When I think of Ebenezer, I think of a grouchy old man. Here to raise my grouchy old man? What in the world? That, my friends, was why I haven’t sung this song in over a year. I didn’t understand that verse and I didn’t want to sing a song that I didn’t understand because doing so just seems too disingenuous.

 

Now, folks, I’m the type of person that likes to get to the bottom of things. When I decide that I want to know something, I’m going to keep asking questions until I find a suitable answer. Plain and simple. So, while the others in the church we deliberating over what song to sing next, I was discretely typing “Ebenezer” my ESV Bible app’s search box. What I found changed everything…

 

The reference made in the song is to 1 Samuel 7. After the Israelites rescued the ark of God from the Philistines, Samuel judged the people. He told them to turn away from their wicked ways and they, in turn, asked him to cry out to God on their behalf. As Samuel was offering a sacrifice to the Lord, the Philistines rose to attack Israel. As they were attacking, God threw them into a great confusion and Israel was able to defeat the Philistine army. As a reminder of the Lord’s help that day, Samuel set a stone near the place of the battle and called it “Ebenezer” which means “stone of help.”

 

It makes so much sense. Here I raise my “stone of help.” My monument. My reminder that I can do nothing without my God. I need to be reminded of that every day, it seems. I was jolted back into church by my mother’s asking for “one more song.”

 

“Number eleven,” I called, perhaps a bit too eagerly.

 

“Okay... Come, Thou Fount.”

 

As we sang, I drank in the words of the song… As if the second verse wasn’t enough to get my attention, the final verse really touched my heart.

 

O to grace how great a debtor Daily I’m constrained to be!

Let Thy grace, Lord, like a fetter, Bind my wand’ring hear to Thee:

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love;

Here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it, Seal it for Thy courts above.

I recently admitted to my friends about the season of depression I’ve been struggling with. It’s been hard lately. Very hard. Yet, I know that a lot of it is my own fault and the words of this song sum it up.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love…

How fitting… I am so guilty of walking away from God when I feel like a) I can handle life on my own or b) when I don’t feel like He’s answering me. Then I wonder how I can be so depressed… Seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? When we wander away from God, you and I have nothing. We are nothing. We can do nothing. It creates an emptiness that we cannot fill. Thankfully, like the Israelites, we can always come back to Him and offer our hearts.

If you’ve never heard “Come, Thou Fount,” I encourage you to go listen to it. It’s a beautiful old hymn with a powerful message. By the time we finished singing it last night, I was completely humbled. My only cry was that of the last verse:

Here’s my heart, Lord. Take and seal it. Seal it for Thy courts above.

 Are you ever prone to wander? What brings you back to when you do?