Hymns around the piano 🎹 - What a Friend We Have in Jesus

In reading about our hymns, you won't run across "awakened after pizza before slumber." Irish writer Joseph Scriven, whose poor health kept him from the army, lost his wife to drowning the night before the wedding. After a move to Canada, his second fiance became ill and they too never reached the altar. "The Good Samaritan of Port Hope" Scriven embraced a life of poverty spending his days helping the "physically handicapped" and those who would need it. "What a Friend" was written and sent to his mother when she became ill back in Ireland.
Verse 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!

The writer shows us that despite our circumstances, the best gift we can give ourselves is to take "everything to God in prayer." Much of this is to exercise "forgiveness" as soon as we possibly can. It doesn't necessarily mean reconciliation or even require contact with another -- sometimes we should not. It's something we do today to stop "going around the same block" and move on from that which holds us back. Thanks be to Thee!

Music by: Charles Converse
Arranged: Natalie Raynes Blanton