Songs of Thankfulness and Praise 1: Come thou Fount of Every Blessing

In trying to find a version for you to hear, I had great difficulty.  Every time I hear this song, no matter the arrangement, I tear up.  I’m actually having trouble writing this post because the lyrics seize my heart and are the prayer that I always go to in my deepest, darkest hour.  Here is a most magnificent arrangement by Mack Wilberg, performed by the MoTab Choir.  Or, if choir and orchestra really isn’t your cup of tea, here’s one beautiful arrangement on the piano by Chris Rice.  And, if you are really picky, here is one by Sufjan Stevens.

Today’s sermon was entitled “Already Blessed–Beyond Belief,” and it was centered around the Beatitudes.  Our pastor gave a wonderful sermon about how we, as God’s saints may face struggle in our lives now, but we have hope because we have the promise of Christ’s saving Grace.

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 God’s unchanging love.

Verse one is setting the stage, calling God who He really is–the giver of all good gifts (James 1:17) and like a musician carefully tuning His instrument, He tunes His people to sing praises because the mercy we’ve been shown is so great that only the strongest, most heartfelt and holy songs are even slightly worthy to our Father’s ears.

Here I raise my Ebenezer; hither by Thy help I’m come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger, interposed His precious blood.

Ebenezer is a weird name.  It actually comes from the book of 1 Samuel.  The Israelites, once again, have wandered from God’s commands and have been worshiping false idols.  Plus, the Philistines were approaching them, ready to attack.  Samuel (interestingly, Hannah’s long-awaited son) judges the Israelites, offers a nursing lamb to God as a sacrifice for their sins and God “thundered with a mighty sound” which confused the Philistines and they were given victory over their enemy.  Just so everyone was clear about what happened, Samuel took a stone and held it to the heavens, saying “Till now, the Lord has helped us.”  He called the spot (stone) Ebenezer, which means, “stone of help.”

So we raise our “stone of help” as an acknowledgement that God fights our battle for us–whether it is Philistines, or on a more personal battle, infertility.  I raise MY Ebenezer to say “God has healed my husband and brought us millions of sperm.  He has preserved my own reproductive health and given me no other issues to contend with. And He has given us the opportunity to have healing spiritually, but also medically through the blessing of health insurance.”  But most importantly, the TRUE help that we need, the ETERNAL help that we need, is salvation from the oppression of sin and our fallen human condition.  Christ found me when I was no friend of His Father’s, and when I was in more danger than I knew, He stepped in with His blood as the final atonement for our sins.

O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be!
Let that grace now like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above.

There is nothing, NOTHING that I can ever begin to do to repay Christ for what he has done for me, and so that grace that I’ve been extend will forever bind my heart to His, through the Word of God and through the sacraments.  A huge part of why I cry every time I sing or hear this hymn is because of my wandering, and the renewal of grace when I repent and ask God once again to seal it for His sake.

O that day when freed from sinning, shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothèd then in blood washed linen how I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry, take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry me to realms of endless day.

Together, with all the company of Heaven, angels, archangels and the saints that have gone before, and will follow us to eternal glory–we will ALL sing together.  God will wipe away every tear from our eye, and we’ll sing His praises forever.  I know logically, that even daily singing, eternal singing, only scratches the surface of how grateful I am.  I am a realist–there is a chance that God’s will is not for me to be a mother, and it is something I struggle with every day.  But when my life here on earth is horrible, when the thing that I want most seems so far away, it brings me great comfort to know that eventually, these earthly things WILL pass away, and the former things will be no more. It will be the wedding feast of the Lamb.  (See Revelation 21: 1-4) Come soon, Lord Jesus.

Songs of Thankfulness and Praise Intro