“Here I Raise My….”

…Ebenezer??

Don’t worry - I am pretty sure we are not the first ones to ask the question, “What on earth is an Ebenezer?!?”. At the bottom of hymn #686 in the Lutheran Service Book, the editors direct us to 1 Samuel 7:12. Here we read:

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer [which means ‘stone of help’]; for he said, “Till now the Lord has helped us.” So the Philistines were subdued and did not again enter the territory of Israel. And the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel.

The stone Samuel called ‘Ebenezer’ served as a monument to and reminder of the faithfulness of God. The Apostle Paul didn’t write the second stanza of ‘Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing’ but he could have. Instead, he wrote to the Christians in Ephesus:

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 

Then he adds that all-important phrase:

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

What God has done for the Ephesians, God has done for every one of us. This is why we sing these words:

Jesus sought me when a stranger,

Wandering from the fold of God;

He to rescue me from danger,

Interposed his precious blood.