Prone to Wander

In 1758, a twenty-two-year-old Englishman named Robert Robinson sat down and wrote one of the most beloved hymns in Christian history: Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing. What makes this remarkable is who Robinson had been just a few years earlier — a fatherless teenager running wild in London, drinking, gambling, and once attending a George Whitefield sermon on a dare, planning to mock the evangelist afterward.

Instead, Whitefield's words broke him open. Robinson found himself face to face with the forgiveness of the Almighty, and it changed everything. The hymn he later wrote pours out with gratitude: "Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God."

But the most powerful line comes near the end: "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love." Here is a man who had been dramatically forgiven, and he is honest enough to admit he might need that forgiveness again tomorrow. He doesn't pretend conversion made him bulletproof.

That single line has resonated for nearly three centuries because it names what most of us are afraid to say out loud — that even after we've been forgiven, the wandering doesn't stop completely.

And that's exactly the point. God's forgiveness isn't a one-time transaction. It is a daily grace, offered again and again to people who are, every one of us, prone to wander. The God who sought Robert Robinson as a stranger keeps seeking us still.