Bye Bye Baby

This is one of my all time most favorite in the world top hymns.  It goes all the way back to my earliest memories as a child when my mother and my Mamaw would sing me to sleep with the words,

“Bye Bye baby, go to sleepy

Bye bye baby, go to sleep.”

(or  the Ghetto version sung by Mamaw Ellie)  

Bye YO Baby, go to sleepy/Bye YO baby go to sleep

Always sung to the tune of “Come, Thou Fount”  I clearly and distinctly remember hearing the hymn for the very first time in a church service and thinking, “They’ve taken Bye Bye Baby and changed the words to it!!!”   Not sure when reality kicked in and I learned that Come Thou Fount actually came first, but it never failed to bring a smile to my heart when I saw it in the bulletin or heard the pianist start the intro.  I loved it. 

I was a little older when I began to pay attention to the words and catch a few of the well, weird  phrases like “Here, I raise my Ebenezer.”   What and/or who is an Ebenezer? I don’t HAVE an Ebenezer.  If I did have an Ebenezer I’m pretty little, how do you expect me to RAISE him up? And even if I could, you mean, right here in the middle of church during the Call to Worship? I was a pretty concrete thinker.  Don’t even get me started on the flaming tongues and fetters.  But after a few years, my favorite hymn became one of those songs we sing in church that I sang just because that’s what we did.  No one ever bothered to stop and tell me what they meant and as I grew older and more “spiritual” I figured there was probably something there that meant something significant to its writer, but who cares-just sing it and don’t ask don’t tell.  Kinda like being gluten free.  Does anybody know what that is????

Well, Bye Yo Baby aka Come Thou Fount has made a comeback, sung by most all of our favorite worship bands.  So do you want to know where this Ebenezer comes from? I looked it up (read: googled it).  It’s based on the story in 1 Sam. 7:12 where God comes through for the Israelites and Samuel sets up a stone of remembrance so the children of Israel will not forget how faithful God is.  He calls the stone “Ebenezer, ‘the stone of my help.’” 

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Hither by Thy help I'm come;

In other words, “you see this symbolic representation of God’s faithfulness, MY Ebenezer? The Stone of my help?? THIS –God’s divine Grace and goodness in the Person of His Son Jesus Christ—THIS is what got me hither-in a constant daily relationship dwelling in His presence! And I acknowledge God, that You alone are my HELP!” 

But that just doesn’t rhyme and would be really hard to fit in the song. So the next time you raise your Ebenezer, what is it you’re raising?  What symbolizes God’s help to you in a time when your own personal philistines were just about to knock you down? Find it.  Raise it up.  Shake it in their faces.  Remind them of your Faithful God and His promise to help. 

One more thing…When googling the lyrics I found this pearl of truth.  It’s a verse from the original version not usually in our hymnals.

“How His kindness yet pursues me/Mortal tongue can never tell,
Clothed in flesh, till death shall loose me/I cannot proclaim it well.” 

Don’t you just love that!!  Let that marinate in your soul for half a second.  Regardless how hard I try to express God’s pursuit of me which makes no logical earthly sense, I just can’t do it.  Not until we are gathered in heaven will we be able to comprehend it and only then adequately express our praises.    

So…would you like me to sing you to sleep? "¯Bye yo baby, go to sleepy…”¯