Good morning and welcome to Our Daily Walk.
Audio version at http://tinyurl.com/2b5lm9
Joe lived a very difficult life. He wanted to be like his father and enter the military but he was rejected due to poor health. He wanted to marry and found a beautiful girl who wanted to marry him. But she tragically drowned the night before their wedding. So he moved to a new country and immersed himself into doing good deeds for others. Then 16 years after his fiancée died he found another girl and they planned to marry. But she fell sick with pneumonia and died before they were married. Life had not been kind to Joe, but he knew that he always had a friend in Jesus.
The Joe of this story is Joseph Scriven, who penned the words to the song “What A Friend We Have In Jesus” around 1857. Following the death of his bride-to-be, he had decided to leave Ireland and move to Canada. Once there he set about to help others who were in need.
He never charged anything for his labors. He cut firewood and did carpentry work but did these only out of charity and not for his livelihood. In fact, Joseph didn’t even own a house. He spent most of his time there living with two different families for which he was a private tutor.
His mother became grief-stricken in Ireland and Joseph sat down and wrote the words of a poem “A Friend Who Understands” and sent that to his mother. It was never intended to be read by anyone else. But someone there took the poem and shared it with another and soon the poem was printed as a song. It would be some ten years later that Joseph heard his poem being sung.
About sixteen years after his first love died Joseph’s life was improving. He found another woman and fell in love. But like his first love, she also died before their wedding. Overcome with depression Joseph fell ill and in a state of delirium he staggered out of bed and fell into a creek and drowned.
Life’s struggles often help make us stronger. They allow us to be more attentive to the needs of others who also need help. They allow us to know that we all need help from some source.
Listen to the first verse of this song.
What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear;
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer.
O, what peace we often forfeit,
O, what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer.
Jesus said in Matthew 11:28-30, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
The burdens of this life can become unbearable. The struggles we face can seem insurmountable. The problems we encounter can become agonizing. Yet through all of this we have a friend in Jesus who offers us rest and a reprieve from our problems.
How many of us take our cares and burdens to God through Jesus? How many times will we, either through forgetfulness or stubbornness, hold on to our problems instead of unloading them to God?
Can any of us find a friend as faithful as Jesus? He knows our sorrows, our weaknesses, our struggles. And he is there for us to uphold us, to give us rest, to give us protection.
What a friend we do have in Jesus! Thank God!
On Our Daily Walk today, may we spend some time today and write down our problems and struggles. May we then spend time in prayer specifically listing these problems and asking for relief and peace.
Our thought for the day: “In prosperity our friends find us. In adversity we find our friends.”
May God bless you on your daily walk.
© Our Daily Walk, Mike Baker, 2007. Permission is granted to copy these articles provided they are not sold and the author's name and copyright are included.
No comments:
Post a Comment