Portals Into God's Presence: Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing

Yesterday, as I was doing laundry, I made up a ditty to the tune of "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing." Like to read it, here it goes:

...Streams of laundry, never ceasing,

Call for mom to be busy.

Prone to leave clothes in the dryer,

Prone to fold them a week late.

Here's my iron, take and use it,

To make laundry nice and crisp.

All jokes aside, "Come, Thou Fount" is one of my favorite hymns. I especially love the third stanza. It speaks of the power of God's grace to cover our every debt. It speak of our need—my need—to have God's grace restraining us as trials and tribulations and our own messiness seek to capture and corrupt our hearts. It speaks of the reality that no matter how good God is, that sin is alluring and enticing and that every once and a while we might be enchanted by its lure. But, thanks be to God, it also speaks of the grater reality that we have the ability to surrender our hearts—the essence of who we are, the seat of our emotions—to a Loving and Merciful God to the glory of God and the edification of God's kingdom.

       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.

Here I raise mine 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.

        O to grace how great a debtor

daily I'm constrained to be!

Let thy goodness, 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.