How sweet the sound...

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.

I was trying really hard not to be a Debbie Downer today, since I’ve honestly been barely keeping it together here over here in Kenya the last few days. I’ve been a bit of a fun burglar, I’m afraid. I’ve been trying to cling to joy, just finding it harder than usual, you know?

Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

This morning, I found myself in the back of a cab, jolting with the potholes on my way to AIM’s missionary hospital to get a second opinion about my shoulder, and again feeling far too sorry for myself.

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.

So I started to sing hymns. (Well, think in hymns. I don’t sing, for the sake of other people.) I love hymns. You know all the great truths there are in those old songs? Wow. And there’s something about truth that even my Debbie Downer-prone self can’t compete with.

Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.

When I’m lying in bed and there are waves of thoughts crashing in my head, I sing hymns. When I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t sleep, I sing hymns.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Sometimes, in the mornings, when the sun is coming over the mountains, I can’t help but sing hymns. When I went into surgery last week, I sang hymns. And, so, today, in the back of that cab, I sang hymns.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

And it was really, really nice.