Prone to Wander, Still Held Fast

Robert Robinson was twenty-two years old when he wrote the words that would haunt him for the rest of his life. It was 1757, and the young pastor was preparing a Pentecost sermon when he penned what we now sing as Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. The hymn pulsed with gratitude — Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by Thy help I'm come — but buried in the third verse was an admission as honest as anything in the Psalms: Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it / prone to leave the God I love.

Robinson knew his own heart. He had come to faith under the convicting preaching of George Whitefield, rescued from a dissolute youth running with rough company. He knew what he was capable of. So he didn't write a triumphant hymn so much as a prayer: Tune my heart to sing Thy grace. And then, knowing his weakness, he begged God to seal what he could not secure himself.

Years later, Robinson did drift — theologically and spiritually, away from the evangelical faith of his youth. The man who wrote about grace had wandered from it.

But here is what the hymn proclaims: grace is not a reward for those who stay. It is an anchor for those who know they might not. Every Sunday, congregations sing Robinson's confession and his prayer together — because they are the same prayer. I will wander. Hold me anyway.

The Most High does not wait for us to stop being prone to wander before He loves us. He seals our hearts precisely because we cannot seal them ourselves.