I absolutely love this time of year! There is so much fun and excitement in the air. It all begins with Halloween for me. Many of you may already know how much I enjoy Halloween. I always try to outdo my costume from the year before; and forgive me for bragging, but I feel like I have become quite the costume expert. The next thing is the extra hour of sleep when Daylight Savings Time ends (or begins, I never can remember). I hold the unpopular love for the early sunsets. To me there is just something cozy about this time of year. Then comes Thanksgiving and Christmas, and most importantly my January birthday. I am letting you know now so you have plenty of time to prepare!
In this particular blog, I want to focus on Thanksgiving. What a wonderful holiday! This year, I am looking forward to my best friend from high school spending a week with me. We get to spend the holiday at my mom’s with my siblings and their families. It will be so wonderful to be together, and I get to meet my newest nephew! I have so much for which to be thankful, and I am glad that we have a day set aside to be reminded of that fact.
This past summer while I was at an organist convention, I found a setting of the hymn “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing” by the phenomenal organist Albert L. Travis. It is a theme and variations, stating the hymn we all know and love as the theme and then presenting several variations of that tune. When I purchased it, I knew that I wanted to save it for Thanksgiving, and since I am not scheduled to play the offertory the Sunday before Thanksgiving, I am going to play it this week. Music is a huge part of my life, and in the playing of this hymn, I am not only praying the lyrics, I am also thanking God for the gift of music. I am thankful that I am able to use music as an act of worship week after week, and it truly is my prayer that my heart be tuned to the song of praise being lifted up.
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 God’s unchanging love!
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Hither by thy help I 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.
O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let that grace now, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wonder, 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.
- Shelton