Prone to Wander, Welcomed Home

In 1757, a twenty-two-year-old English pastor named Robert Robinson sat down and wrote one of the most beloved hymns in the Christian tradition: Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. Robinson knew something about forgiveness. As a teenager, he had been a troublemaker running wild through the streets of London, apprenticed to a barber but drawn to mischief. Then one night he wandered into a meeting where George Whitefield was preaching. Robinson had gone to scoff, but he left undone by grace.

The hymn he wrote pours out gratitude for a God who would pursue someone like him. But one particular line has echoed through nearly three centuries of worship: "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love."

Robinson wrote those words not as theology in the abstract. He wrote them as confession. He knew the pull of old patterns, the quiet drift that happens even after the most dramatic conversion. And he dared to sing that confession out loud, trusting that the God who first found him in a rowdy crowd would keep finding him again.

That is the shape of divine forgiveness — not a single transaction but a covenant with a God who never stops pursuing our wandering hearts. The Almighty does not forgive us once and then stand back with arms crossed, waiting for us to fail. He meets us on every road we wander down, ready to welcome us home.

We are all prone to wander. And we serve a God who is prone to forgive.