Joseph Scriven was engaged to be married following graduation from the University of Dublin, Ireland, in 1842. The night before the wedding, his fiancée tragically drowned. Heartbroken, he crossed the Atlantic to Lake Rice, Canada, where he lived as a tutor for many years. He fell in love a second time in 1860 and became engaged to Eliza Roche. But before they could marry, she died of tuberculosis. He spent the remainder of his life serving the poor. As an old man, racked with illness, he stayed with a friend who discovered a poem Scriven had written years earlier, perhaps to comfort his grieving mother. Its words are now world famous:
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 IS “A FRIEND THAT STICKETH CLOSER THAN A BROTHER” (Prov. 18:24b). You may have been disappointed by friends who promised to be somewhere or do something and failed to show or do. A “friend” may have sold you out when the chips were down. But there is one friend who has never disappointed you. His name is Jesus: “…for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper…” (Heb, He is there with the “balm of Gilead” when life’s wounds are deep (Jer. 8:22; Jn. 14:1). He is there in the fiery furnace when we are “cast into persecution’s fire” (Dan. 3:23; 2 Tim 3:12). He is always there for us to “cast our care upon him” (1 Pet. 5:7),
JESUS IS A FRIEND WHO DARED “LAY DOWN HIS LIFE FOR HIS FRIENDS” (Jn. 15:13). is the single greatest act of friendship ever shown. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” He “tasted death for every man” (Heb. did it when we were at odds with Him! “For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commandeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rm. 5:7,8). Who can forget the forgiving words His swollen tongue and parched lips mouthed to His enemies at the end (Lk. 23:34)?
JESUS IS A FRIEND WHO MADE KNOWN ALL THINGS THAT HE HEARD FROM HIS FATHER (Jn. 15:15). Jesus was privy to information that we needed. No one else could tell us. Like a good friend, He let us “in on the secret.” We needed to know the way to heaven, and He had come from there to show us the way (Jn. 14: l3; Rev. 4:4). He claimed to be the way, the truth, and the life (Jn. 1416). He even blazed the trail for us (Heb. 2:10), so that all we need to do is walk in His steps (l Pet. 2:21). He, as our Friend, left the plan of salvation for us—faith (Jn. 3:16); repentance (Lk. 13:3); confession (Mt. 10:32); baptism (Mk. 16: 16); and godly living (Lk. 9:23).
Listen to Him speak and think of your life: “Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you” (Jn. 15:14). Are you the Lord’s friend?
