The Wound That Became a Hymn

Joseph Scriven wrote "What a Friend We Have in Jesus" in 1855, but the story behind it will break your heart open. The night before his wedding in Ireland, his young fiancee drowned. Scriven was devastated. He eventually emigrated to Canada, trying to outrun his grief. There, he fell in love again, and his second fiancee died of illness before they could marry.

Two loves lost. Two futures erased.

Yet out of that doubled devastation, Scriven wrote words that have carried millions through their darkest hours: "What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear." He composed the hymn not for publication or fame, but simply to comfort his aging mother back in Ireland.

Here is what strikes me: Scriven did not write about healing because he had arrived at some tidy resolution. He wrote from inside the wound. And God used that very wound as a channel of comfort for the whole world.

This is how El Roi, the God Who Sees, often works. He does not always remove our suffering. But He redeems it. He takes the fracture and makes it the very place where light enters and compassion flows outward.

Your deepest hurt may become your most powerful ministry. The healing God offers is not always the absence of pain. It is the transformation of pain into something that blesses the world.