Monday, March 7, 2016

I will sing

Monday in the Fourth Week of Lent


Your love, O Lord, for ever will I sing;
from age to age my mouth will proclaim your faithfulness.
Psalm 89:1

 As the familiar hymn tune washes over me, I unexpectedly begin to tear up. It is a Sunday like any other Sunday and nothing has happened to make me feel particularly vulnerable. But perhaps that is the point.

How many times have I sung these words? Yet this morning, I hear them differently. They bathe my soul filling crevices where I yearn for loving reassurance. I didn’t even know I was thirsty.

Here I find my greatest treasure;
hither by thy help I've come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure,
safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God;
he, to rescue me from danger,
bought me with his precious blood.

What did Robert Robinson, only 22 when he wrote “Come Thou Font of Every Blessing,” know or seek that led him to author such beauty? Could he have imagined me, a middle-aged woman more than 250 years later, being touched by what he penned? And who will come after us, what other weary travelers who have lost their way will find solace in these verses?

None of us knows the joys or burdens we bring with us to lay at Jesus’ feet. And it is here, not in this building but in this moment of uncertainty as I am thrown into the very presence of God, where I find my greatest treasure.