Saturday, September 20, 2008

youtube epiphany

I'm not a huge YouTube person (lots of garbage to be found there) but it has its uses, such as my favorite hymn of all time sung by Sufjan Stevens. I need to just go ahead and buy or download every religious song this man sings because I could use more beautiful epiphanies in my life. I'm nervous about embedding the video (I'm pretty sure it will end up in my profile or somewhere) so here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqKwSffyr2k

Oh, and the hymn is "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing." The words are lovely and wonderful so I will share them here.

1. Come, thou Fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it,
mount of thy redeeming love.

2. Here I raise mine *Ebenezer;
hither by thy help I'm 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,
interposed his precious blood.

3. 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.
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.

* For an eloquent explanation of what Ebenezer means, click here. My church's hymnal omits
verse 2, which is a shame because
the phrase about Jesus's blood rescuing us from danger
(of all sorts) is striking and true.

3 comments:

Kristi said...

That is one of my all time favorite hymns!

Patty O. said...

It's funny, because this is another of my friend's favorite hymns and I just recently heard it myself for what I think is the first time. And now all of a sudden, I am hearing it everywhere. It is beautiful.

Anonymous said...

That is my favorite hymn as well. I have a great instrumental version of it by Mark Gelison that I love to listen to.