The Fount of Every Blessing

Recently in church we sang that wonderful hymn, Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing. Now, I know that hymns are no longer in vogue in many circles, so maybe this will refresh your memory.

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.

No? That's okay. It's a wonderful song. The second verse starts, "Here I find my greatest treasure; Hither by Thy help I've come." Really good stuff.

But when we got to the third verse, I noticed a difference. The verse is supposed to read like this:

Oh, 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.

Instead, we sang, "Let Thy grace, Lord, like a fetter bind my wandering heart to Thee." So?

I find in this song the very key to binding my wandering heart to Christ. He refers to it in the second verse. "Here I find my greatest treasure." And he says it again in the original text in the third verse. You see, it is His goodness that binds us to Him. Oh, by all means, we're grateful for His grace. I don't mean to dismiss that. But when we find in Him the ultimate goodness, we are not as prone to stray. You know, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matt 6:21)

There's a real secret here. We miss it ... often. We obey out of duty and we love out of gratitude and those are fine, but are we tied to Christ as the ultimate good? It is in the nature of the human being to seek happiness, to pursue pleasure. When that pleasure is the ultimate pleasure -- the presence of God -- we can do no wrong. So I pray, too, "Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee."