As I prepared to create a few posts centered around "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing," I turned to my favorite source for hymn lyrics, Cyberhymnal. It's certainly not unusual to find that a hymn I've know all my life has lyrics I've never heard, and sometimes stanzas and stanzas of them. "Come, Thou Fount" is a case where parts of some of the original stanzas were omitted and the remainders combined into a new stanza.
Cyberhymnal renders the second stanza thusly:
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.
Who has not known this struggle? It is the essence of trying to live a Christian life with a soul that is cursed by sin, with a heart that is desperately wicked, with a mind that needs dramatically transformed, with strength that is easily spent on the cares of the world.
Romans 7:21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Psalm 42:5 Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.
Paul and David knew the struggle, and yet clearly they knew salvation and the One who saves. Thus even though we await a final rescue from this body, "Here Thy praises I'll begin."
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