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.
This hymn begins with an invitation – inviting our omnipresent God to come and fill us with Himself so that we might lift our hearts and voices in praise to Him. This emphasizes what His word tells us, that He loves when we worship Him!
The author of this hymn, Robert Robinson (1735-1790), was influenced by evangelist George Whitefield, whom he and some rowdy friends had gone to mock. Instead, he was convicted by the Holy Spirit and committed his life to Christ. Of his conversion he wrote “I found full and free forgiveness through the precious blood of Jesus Christ.” We read of his conversion in the following stanza:
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood;
How His kindness yet pursues me
Mortal tongue can never tell,
Clothed in flesh, till death shall loose me
I cannot proclaim it well.
Robinson left a legacy of two hymns. Come Thou Fount is the one still widely sung today. We can almost read his story and struggles in the words as penned. After his conversion, he went on to become a preacher and a devoted father of 12. In 1787, he lost his daughter, Julie, at age 17. Still overcome with grief, Robinson died in 1790.
Sorrowing I shall be in spirit,
Till released from flesh and sin,
Yet from what I do inherit,
Here Thy praises I’ll begin;
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Here I raise my Ebenezer? What, or who, is this Ebenezer that one should raise? We find a reference in 1 Samuel 7:12, “Samuel then took a large stone and placed it between the towns of Mizpah and Jeshanah. He named it Ebenezer (which means “the stone of help”), for he said, “Up to this point the Lord has helped us.” This was in response to a God-given victory over their enemies.
From this we see that to raise an Ebenezer is similar to setting up a standing stone, or stone pillar as mentioned in various places in the Bible. These were used to provide a visible reminder of God’s faithfulness. We have our own methods today to remind ourselves of God’s faithfulness to us. Certainly, we have His Word. Also, we may create or save physical reminders, or tokens, of certain key struggles God has helped us overcome.
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.
So, what about these words that describe us all and possibly even make us cringe? We may all have had times where we found ourselves vulnerable to this “wander-lust.” Even times we went beyond mere words and did, in fact, wander from this God we so love. Praise God that He has sealed the hearts of those who belong to Him and thus draws us back to Himself.
The story is told in several sources that the author of this hymn was riding in a stagecoach when he heard a fellow passenger humming this very hymn. The woman turned to Robert and asked what he thought of it. His alleged response was, “Madam, I am the poor, unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds, if I had them, to enjoy the feeling I had then.”
It seems that even the writer of great text, is prone to wander from the truth of the very words he once felt. Neither are any of us beyond the reach of life’s challenges and struggles in the world in which we live. May we remember always that our true hope lies in the One who invites us to join Him forever in the realms of endless day.
O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed 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.
Sources: Internet: (https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1-300/) / https://www.hhhistory.com/2020/01/who-wrote-come-thou-fount-of-every.html / How Sweet the Sound: The Message of Our Best-Loved Hymns–book by Richard Allen Farmer