In Tune

“Come thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace.”

For some time I thought the lyric was “tune my heart to sing thy praise” which is a reasonable thought but the line actually is “tune my heart to sing thy grace”.

I have been pondering this phrase…tune my heart…like the strings of a guitar, my heart gets out of tune from time to time…and when I say from time to time, I really mean all the time.

I asked a guitar playing friend why guitars go out of tune. He told me that the strings stretch as they are played. Then they need to be tuned again. Hmm…

Tune my heart to sing thy grace…when I am stretched…tune me again to sing thy grace…

My default setting is not grace. It’s just not. Whether it is receiving grace or extending grace, I wander from it. Sometimes just a bit – so that the song from my heart sort of sounds okay. The words may still be right but if you listen closely something sounds a little off…a little out of tune.

I forget to remember that God loves me… completely…unconditionally…unfailingly. Period.

I forget that my busyness, my activities, my accomplishments, though all good and supposedly all for Him, do not change a thing. That is, they do not change His love for me. They do not change how He has forgiven me. They do not change the grace extended to me.

And the anger that I justify feeling towards another…my desire for justice when I have been wronged…my unwillingness to forgive…that is not my heart singing his grace either.

Later in the song it says, “Oh to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be.”

When I think of the grace I have received…grace and mercy so freely given…I am in debt infinitely beyond my ability to repay and yet so often I am like the ungrateful servant who demands a debt to be repaid even though it is a pittance compared to what he has been forgiven. (Matt.18:21-35)

We know it – don’t we – that we are lost without grace…completely without hope….

And we also know – don’t we – of the need to forgive as we have been forgiven?

“Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievance you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” (Col.3:13)

Grace and forgiveness…oh that that would always be my response…that my heart would be tuned to sing His grace.

Ruth U.