Thanksgiving Project #8 - Ebeneezer

I love the hymn "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing". This is for several reasons. I love to imitate the Ethiopian version of it "Come zhou Foun tahv eevrrry blehssing, Toon mah hahht too seeng zzhy plraize". [Writing it out is so much harder than to sing it. ]
The other reason I love it is because of the stanza which says :

Oh 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.

I am so prone to wander. I am so prone to leave the God I love.
And yet, how grateful I am that God's grace
follows me and searches me out and takes me before
the throne, where I am pronounced "not guilty"
because Jesus "interposed his Precious Blood"
(see next stanza)

This past week, I have twice heard the
historical reference
to the following verse from
the same song:

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.

Samuel of the Old Testament and his army had won a very important
battle, Samuel took a large stone and set it between two
cities as a visual reminder of God's goodness
and the victory He had orchestrated.
The stone was named "EBENEEZER", which
means "stone of help".

They were to look back at the battle and be thankful to God,
every time they crossed the path of that stone.

The exercise that I have labelled "Thanksgiving Project" has become
an "Ebeneezer" stone for me.
It is a visual reminder of all the things that are
blessings in my life.

I know it has not been an exhaustive list,
but I also know that any time I look
back at the label called "Blessings",
I will remember this week of Thanksgiving 2008
in a very special way.
And I will be reminded once again to be thankful for the many
many blessings that I enjoy every day.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!