My Friend
Helen Francis
Music, and especially singing, has always been a love of mine and I've recently been revisiting songs and hymns that have been meaningful to me throughout my Christian journey. One of the earliest from growing up in the Church of England was "Oh Jesus I have promised" and another I learnt there and loved was "My song is love unknown" both have rather too many verses to write out here, but you can read the lyrics online.
I began to consider more deeply why these two hymns had stayed with me for over fifty decades.
The first declares the commitment made to Jesus at the outset of belief, and describes some of the pitfalls and difficulties that might be faced along the way, with requests for support to avoid them.
The music I first heard it sung to was stirring but not particularly memorable, and in more recent years it has been revamped a couple of times with music that to me doesn't fit the hymns words at all. So it's not melody that has made this hymn meaningful to me.
The second hymn has a much better tune, and I do know that is part of why I like it. It's a hymn about Jesus' love for us, and it covers the gospel story with beautiful poetry in it's six verses.
But as I re-read these two very different favourites of mine, I realised there was something that they both shared; something that probably explains why they have been so significant to me.
Let me compare a couple of the lines to highlight what it is:
Hymn one, verse one says:
"Oh Jesus I have promised to serve thee to the end, be thou forever near me, my Master and my friend."
That phrase 'Master and friend' is repeated at the end of verse four and the last verse finishes:
"uphold me to the end and then to rest receive me, my Saviour and my friend".
Hymn two, verse two says:
"but oh my friend, my friend indeed, who at my need his life did spend."
and verse 6 finishes:
"this is my friend, in whose sweet praise, I all my days could gladly spend".
The idea of Jesus being my friend is what has anchored these songs to my heart. How accessible and relatable It makes him!
It has struck me that Christianity, as far as I am aware, is unique amongst world religions in having its God as a friend. What an enormous honour that we can have that relationship; what comfort, and joy it gives.
No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.
(John 15:15)Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
(John 15:13)
