Sometimes you have to take a thing apart to understand it. You have to look at the pieces out of their typical order if you want to see them clearly.
I experience that just about every day at work. When I read a piece of copy out loud, I’ll hear mistakes I didn’t see on paper because words and sentences need a certain rhythm just like music, and that’s a job for ears, not eyes. A disjointed story usually comes from flaws in the way information is grouped and ordered, in which case you have to take it apart, sort everything properly, and put it back together again.
This morning, I did that kind of dissection on one of my favorite hymns, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” I love it so much I walked down the aisle to it on our wedding day, when I was focused on its message of gratitude for all the blessings showered on us.
But this song is also about human failings and forgiveness.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love
Why do I wander from the God I love? I don’t know. But I know that I do. Wanderings never end up making me happy. They just make me regretful and disappointed in myself.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God;
He to rescue me from danger
interposed His precious blood
The idea that Jesus comes for us, seeks us out when our own choices put us in a spiritual danger we can’t see—when we’ve made ourselves a stranger to the “fold of God”—that's about as humbling as it gets. So is this line:
O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be
We can’t earn our way out of our own human frailty. We can’t work our way to perfection. We can only rely on God’s grace, freely given to us and for us. We can only come to the fount of every blessing. And be grateful for it always.
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