Rande worships Jesus.

Here I raise my Ebenezer!

While there’s a good chance this will change tomorrow (or halfway through today…), if you were to ask me about a favorite hymn, in this moment I would say it is “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.”

There is something both so poetic and practical about the song (originally written in 1758 by Robert Robinson) that it reaches through layers of my being - pricking the heart and taking thoughts captive. It speaks to me, and for me.

Years ago I recorded a version of this song with my wife, Sunnie. In that process that I like so many others really came to think about this lyric “Here I raise my Ebenezer…” Even though I had sung the words before, and had applied meaning to the one that stands out to most of us as a character from a Charles Dickens novel, when I decided to do a little word study in the Hebrew, I was surprised as what I had discovered.

It’s in reference to a verse in the Bible: “Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen, and called its name Ebenezer, saying, ‘Thus far the Lord has helped us’ ” (1 Samuel 7:12). As it happened, God had just turned the odds on their heads and delivered victory over their enemies to the hands of His children. Samuel, wanting to memorialize the occasion, set up a makeshift alter - a stone. In short - Ebenezer means “stone of help.”

In the verses that lead up to this battle, we discover that the children of Israel had just returned to God once again (the consistent ebb and flow of their relationship with God - is much like our own, if we’re honest). They trusted Him to be their help and He was. The memorial stone was to be a reminder of that so that the next time trouble would come knocking, they would have a visible reminder of the deliverance that is found in God alone.

We’d be wise to follow suit. When God blesses us, heals us, finds favor in us, mends our relationships, forgives us and saves us, we might be doing ourselves a favor to set our own Ebenezer. Then, when the storms of life rip open overhead and we find ourselves in need of His great help once again, we might be reminded that our Lord is trustworthy, faithful and able - and He is our Stone of help.

In the hymn, we sing “Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by Thy help I’m come.”

When we sing these words we are acknowledging that Jesus is our Stone of help - and by His help we are no longer left for dead, but we are delivered to life - and life more abundantly - and life eternal.

And that is something we can all sing about.