Saturday, February 9, 2019

All the Way My Savior Leads Me (Strength in Hymn)


"All the Way My Savior Leads Me"
Fanny Crosby

All the way my Savior leads me,
What have I to ask beside?
Can I doubt His tender mercy,
Who through life has been my Guide?
Heav’nly peace, divinest comfort,
Here by faith in Him to dwell!
For I know, whate’er befall me,
Jesus doeth all things well;
For I know, whate’er befall me,
Jesus doeth all things well.

All the way my Savior leads me,
Cheers each winding path I tread,
Gives me grace for every trial,
Feeds me with the living Bread.
Though my weary steps may falter
And my soul athirst may be,
Gushing from the Rock before me,
Lo! A spring of joy I see;
Gushing from the Rock before me,
Lo! A spring of joy I see.


All the way my Savior leads me,
Oh, the fullness of His love!
Perfect rest to me is promised
In my Father’s house above.
When my spirit, clothed immortal,
Wings its flight to realms of day
This my song through endless ages:
Jesus led me all the way;
This my song through endless ages:
Jesus led me all the way.

About This Hymn:


This hymn was written by Fanny Crosby (1820-1915), who became blind when she was six weeks old due to a doctor's error. She wrote this hymn as a response of a curious incident of God’s providence. You can read more here: Fanny Crosby and the Story Behind the Song “All the Way My Savior Leads Me”. Fanny wrote several thousand hymns, many under pseudonyms. I remember reading her biography many years ago. She didn’t have an easy life. You can read more about her here:

 Why I Chose This Hymn:
I had been musing lately on how God has led me through the nearly 43 years I have been a Christian believer. I have so many stories tucked away in my memory of odd little circumstances which set into motion long reaching ripple effects leading to huge changes in my direction. (More on that later.) So I muse and I’m amused.

Anyway, the title to this hymn came to mind during my ponderings, which is unusual since I didn’t even recognize the lyrics nor the melody when I looked it up on YouTube. (The video is at the bottom of this post.)

Reading the words “Jesus doeth all things well” at the end of the first stanza reminds me of the famous words, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well” written by Julian of Norwich in her book Revelations of Divine Love. Julian was a medieval anchoress, a woman who chose to withdraw from public life to consecrate herself to a solitary life of prayer and devotion. She literally lived in a cell attached to a church, St. Julian’s, from which she took her name. I’m not planning to follow her footsteps in that, I assure you. However, I am preparing for some sort of ministry, the form of which I do not yet know. To that end, I am currently a student at Asbury Theological Seminary’s Orlando campus, and last semester I wrote a Primary Source Analysis (PSA) paper on Julian’s work for my Church History 1 class. You can read it here: Revelations of Divine Love.


The story of how I ended up at seminary is one example of God’s curious way of leading me. It involved:
  • a lifelong desire to be educated for ministry
  • a conversation with my mother about grad school several years ago before she passed away
  • a journal entry specifically mentioning Asbury Seminary even though I could not attend then
  • assorted family crises
  • ministry among other women in crisis
  • a lot of blogging about church abuse issues
  • the resulting FB friendship with a woman who blogs about the same topics on the opposite side of the country
  • that new friend’s Facebook post about the Christians for Biblical Equality conference she was attending in my city
  • a mutual FB friend (whom I had also not yet met in person) offering a scholarship so I could attend that conference
  • meeting several Methodist women at the CBE conference
  • my grandson’s rescheduled birthday party (the Sunday-morning-several-weeks-late timing of which caused me to visit a Methodist church’s early service since it was my late mother’s birthday and she had been born into a Methodist family and I had admired the Methodist women I had met at the CBE conference)
  • running into an old friend at that Methodist church (whom I had met when we worked for the same school years ago)
  • attending her Lectio Divina Bible study, and hearing her talk about her Inductive Bible Study class at seminary (a conversation which made me drool)
  • my 2018 "one word" Focus
  • and several key shifts in my own family circumstances.

And that’s just a tiny sample of the story. There is much more to it, but I don’t want to write a book here.  And all the way my Savior leads me. That much I know, even though I don’t always know what’s next on the agenda. Life is quite an adventure. I can trust God to be with me every step of the way. And then I look back and laugh.

Related links? Sure thing!

 The Photos in this Post: 

 The photos in this post are from my visit to the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America in Washington, D.C. last fall. I had wanted to go back to the National Cathedral the last time I visited family in Maryland. (See my poem God of Joy, I See Thee for photos of my first visit in 2017.) My nephew Doug also loves the cathedral and offered to take me. When we were driving home, I found out he had plotted a surprise detour to see the monastery too. He knew I would enjoy it, and I certainly did! I love this kind of adventure. You can see more about that here: My Birthday Weekend in Maryland. 

 Oh, all that for one hymn post! You never know what you're going to get when you read my blogs!

 Blessings,
Virginia



Posted by at
Labels: , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)