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Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,

prone to leave the God I love;

As we vacation in Wisconsin, my bride and I have been on several walks along trails in nature. It is a great time to see God’s handiwork and marvel at his love toward us.

Then there are the park benches.

The hymnist, Robert Robinson, in the 1700s, penned the lyrics to the hymn “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” The negative reflection within the hymn is his confession of a wandering heart. The song resonates with those singing because we all perceive our own proneness to leave God and his immense greatness. That inclination is the wound that cries for the cure that only the Savior can provide.

The park benches, all of them that I have encountered, have been monuments – not to the goodness of God – but to the wandering of our hearts. They are all erected in memory of someone who had passed away, yet all of them are celebrations of thoughts, memories, attitudes, dispositions, and affects that center on the self – not the self’s Creator. They are monuments to the greatness of a person who has now departed this life.

Back to the hymn:

Here I raise my Ebenezer;

hither by thy help I’m come;

The word “ebenezer” comes from two Hebrew root words: eben (stone) and ezer (help). We see it appear in 1 Samuel 7:12

Samuel took a stone and set it up . . . and called its name Ebenezer; for he said, “Till now the Lord has helped us.”

Samuel chose to erect a monument, not to his own glory, not to his own experience in this life, not how he hummed his way through living, not how he danced like nobody is watching, but to the glory of Yahweh, who had just miraculously defeated the attacking Philistines.

If you have a park bench, a monument, or anything built by your loved ones to remember you, leave them the right legacy so that they might engrave the right words. May those words that they choose point others to eternity. May your temporary life, engraved in a temporary park bench, make a difference for eternity to those who are prone to wander.

You can read more about this hymn in the article at Desiring God, by clicking --> here <--