Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing is one of my favorite hymns! I’m excited to share this arrangement. I’m also excited to share some rather random thoughts that I’ve pondered as I’ve worked to prepare the recording.
I’ve been thinking about echoes and about prayer.
Robert Robinson’s “melodious sonnet” feels like a beautiful echo of some of my prayers. Of course, calling it an echo doesn’t make sense. An echo is an exact re-sounding of the original sound not something far lovelier. And Robinson’s words, written in 1758, couldn’t be an echo of mine; an echo cannot come before the sound. Even if it could, an echo cannot endure for hundreds of years. So, why do his words feel like an echo to me? I think it is because the lyrics speak…sing truth, and true things resound within our souls. There is the echo. Some echoes can be unrestrained by time! Such is the wonder of art that is true to truth. It echoes.
What about prayer? Prayer, like my definition of an echo, doesn’t follow known laws of physics. What waves do prayers ride upon? I wonder. What kind of awesome force carries a child’s plea to a loving Heavenly Father in some unknown direction, around every obstacle, through an incomprehensibly vast abyss of space to resound in His Holy ear? The fastest waves of which science is aware would surely take life-times to reach Him. (That wouldn’t do any of us much good.) And what of prayers uttered in the mind…silent? How can they reach God? More mysterious still, what of those yearnings that cannot form into words at all? How does God hear our prayers?
I don’t know how He hears our prayers, but I know He does.
I have offered too few prayers of “loudest praise,” but many quiet or silent pleas and some yearnings without words. It doesn’t seem to matter what prayers are like. Every prayer is heard! I really believe that. I have gone to God wanting, lacking, empty; and I have come away filled so many times! Someone is aware of my prayer, is attending to my needs according to wisdom, is most merciful and kind, is my fount of every blessing. It defies logic for something to come from nothing. Someone hears my prayers! God hears me. Why do I believe such a fantastical thing? Because the truth of it echoes in the most alive part of me. It makes sense in the center of my heart, it feels right, I know. I pray about a burden of sadness for some horrible story of suffering I cannot bear, a question about a troubling scripture story I do not understand, discouragement about a family relationship I can’t seem to mend, frustration over an injustice I am struggling to forgive, worry about a loved one I want to help, heartache about a weakness I cannot seem to change. I pray and I am given something: calm, peace, love, gratitude, hope, ideas, courage, understanding beyond my own. I am given something from the Fount of Every Blessing! I pray, He blesses me and thereby “[tunes] my heart to sing [His] grace.” God is good! Praying to Him is awesome!
How thankful I am for those who preserved their faith in this beautiful prayer we call a hymn that continues to echo truth in the hearts of believers centuries after it was written! I hope you enjoy it!
Thank you to my daughter, Anna, who agreed to share her lovely voice for this recording!
Sheet music of this arrangement, for yourself or your church choir, are available on our family website, www.bjamble.com.