Lent: Prone to Wander

Of any line in any hymn, I submit that this one from Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing is as honest and raw as they come...

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

This is one of the grand thoughts we ought to dwell on during this Lenten journey toward the cross, how prone we are to wander from our faith.  Life gets too hard and we consider rejecting it all.  Life gets too easy and we forget to draw near.  This journey is a steady battle to keep our heart soft and our ear inclined to God.  

When Robert Robinson wrote the hymn, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing in 1758, he understood the depths of wandering.  His father died when he was young and his mother, unable to control him, sent him to London to learn barbering.  Instead he pursued drinking and gang-life, even visiting a fortune-teller at the age of 17.  Something about that experience unsettled him, and the next evening he attended an evangelistic meeting held by George Whitefield, one of the greatest preachers in history, noted to have a voice that was part foghorn and part violin.  I wish I could listen to the sermon he gave that night.

The preacher's words haunted Robinson for 3 years until he gave his heart to Chist and soon entered the ministry.  One day he wrote a hymn for his church for Pentecost Sunday, Come Thou Fount, and it is still beloved by Christians today, and is one of my personal favorites.  

I identify with Robinson's story.  As a teenager, I lived a life devoid of faith and fraught with loose morals and questionable choices that would leave me often unsettled but unsure what needed to change.  One day as an RA in college, I attended a seminar on witchcraft that was part of my "diversity training."  I was outwardly tolerant of the ideas I heard about, but inwardly, I was shaken.  God used that experience to open up conversations with my boyfriend, who is now my husband, on spiritual matters.  Not long after, when God sought me out one day in a courtyard on the campus of Iowa State, I sensed that He was the answer.  Shortly thereafter, I committed my life to Christ and have spent the last 24 years inviting God to have his way in my life.

Jesus sought me as a stranger, wandering from the fold of God;

He, to rescue me from danger, interposed his precious blood.

There is an interesting line in verse to that says, "Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by Thy help I come."  This line was inspired by 1 Samuel 7:12,  where the prophet Samuel raises a stone as a monument and saying, "Hitherto has the Lord helped us."  Samuel names the stone Ebenezer, which translates to Stone of Help.

Enjoy this gorgeous rendition of the song by Chris Rice...