John 15:12-17
Text: Joseph Scriven (1820-1886) Tune: Charles Crovat Converse (1832-1918)
1. What a friend we have in Jesus
All our sins and griefs to bear
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer
Oh, what peace we often forfeit
Oh, what needless pain we bear--
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer
2. Have we trials and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged—
Take it to the Lord in prayer.
Can we find a friend so faithful
Who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness—
Take it to the Lord in prayer.
3. Are you weak and haven laden?
Cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Savior, still our refuge—
Take it to the Lord in Prayer
Do your friends despise, forsake you?
Take it to the Lord in prayer.
In his arms he’ll hold and shield you:
You will find a solace there.
MEDITATION
“Yes, I know all that, my dear,” said my father holding his pen like a cigar in his hand, a familiar pose, after I had come home from college with my new skepticism in full plumage. “The question is, what do you think of Jesus? Do you know about him, only, or is he your
friend?”
He had me there. Faith is not knowledge, it is belief in Jesus, and a relationship with him.
Jesus in his farewell discourses goes to great lengths to explain to the disciples what his
life and work are all about. He came to be with us--Immanuel, God with us; to live in
close relationship with us. He and his father, he says, will come to abide in us. There, in
our hearts, the godhead will dwell, Jesus says. And he will be our friend.
Thus we can talk frequently to the Lord. It is no long distance call, either. Through faith,
he lives in our hearts, ever present and ready to talk.
That is the message of our hymn today. The writer of this hymn, among the top ten
favorites of all time, Joseph Scriven, a graduate of Trinity College in Dublin, suffered
great anxieties and troubles. Raised in Ireland, in a home of substance, he left Ireland not
long after his fiancé died of drowning the night before their wedding. It was an
unimaginable blow. He fled to Ontario, Canada. There he heard his mother was
dangerously ill. He wrote her this poem, calling it, “Pray without ceasing.”
As he settled into life in Canada, he found new love and, in 1860, was about to marry
when his fiancé died of pneumonia. This was a blow from which he never really
recovered. He continued writing and working. That he had written the text, which he had
published anonymously, became known only near the end of his life. In 1886, Scriven
was caught in the depths of despair from his ill health, poverty and deep depression. At a
the night without notice. His body was found floating in the lake the next morning. Those
with him were never sure if it had been accident or suicide.
One might have wished someone could have sung his famous words back to him in his
time of despair. It may have encouraged him as his words have lifted millions around the
world on hearing his song so simply set by Charles Converse.
The line is open, as Scriven wrote in this poem. Take all your troubles without ceasing,
all the worries and anxieties you are having just now, to the Lord in prayer. It is what he
came for, to take on all our troubles, and exchange them for his peace. He is right here. A
friend indeed.
HYMN INFO
Charles Crozat Converse, who composed the tune, had studied law and musical composition in Leipzig, Germany, where almost every composer of the time would go to study composition. Converse, well along in years, died during the second wave of the 1918 influenza epidemic.
LINKS
Ella Fitzgerald
Via Vitae
German
Vision children’s choir from Uganda