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:

• Fanny Crosby (Wholesome Words)
• Fanny Crosby (Britannica)
• The Life and Ministry of Frances Jane Crosby
• Fanny Crosby (FamPeople) - this is the most compete article by far! I haven’t even finished reading it.

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!

• This Mom Starts a New Chapter
• Arise (One Word)
• Sweet Sunday Morning in Geneve (Europe #5) - an amusing story of being in the right place at the right time
• The Power of a Christian Woman's Voice
• A Vision of Mother-Life (A Poem)
• Strength in Hymn index
• Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us
• Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah
• Mutual by Design 2017 Christians for Biblical Equality Conference
• The Puritans, The Quakers, and Little Old Me (Reflections on A Measure of Light) - many generations of God's leading in my family history
• Pilgrimage and Jubilee

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

Mutual by Design 2017 Christians for Biblical Equality Conference

Dear friends,

Two weeks ago, my longtime fellow blogger and FB friend Julie Anne Smith noted on her FB page that she would be in Orlando for a conference. She wanted to know if anyone would like to meet up there, which for me is "here" since I live just north of Orlando.

I jumped at the chance to meet her in person, as she lives on the opposite end of the country - not much farther you can get from Florida than Washington State, unless we're talking Alaska. And I was intrigued by what conference she was attending.

Julie Anne Smith
www.spiritualsoundingboard.com

It turned out to be Mutual by Design, the 2017 international conference of Christians for Biblical Equality. The funny thing is, I had just been on the CBE web site a few days before that to look for book recommendations and hadn't even noticed the conference information! I got to thinking how much I would enjoy attending - and fortunately for me, another kind FB friend (whom I also had not met in person) worked out the details for me to go to the conference and to stay at the hotel for the weekend.  She was also responsible for several other women being able to attend.

All of this was on very short notice. I found out about the conference on Tuesday, and it started on Friday morning! And I went out to dinner with some of the ladies when they arrived in town on Wednesday!

Dinner at Sweet Tomatoes two days before
the conference with some of the CBE attendees:
Lindon, Tega, Mabel, Reagan, Tega's
daughter (I don't know her name!), and Gwen

I am super grateful that I went. I have been learning about Christian egalitarian theology in recent years, and see it as so refreshing as compared to the patriarchal/complementarian theology to which I had been heavily exposed in some of our former churches and in certain edges of the home schooling movement.

Egalitarians believe that men and women are truly equal. Not identical. There are obvious differences. But they are equal. No hierarchy. No superiority. No gender rank pulling nor rigid gender roles in the family, the church, or the work place. No "Woman, SUBMIT!" They certainly believe in submission in marriage! But it is mutual submission, mutual leadership, mutual serving, mutual respect, and mutual love.

I see the beauty of that.
I see the promise in that.
I see the fruit borne by it.
I see the power of the gospel at work in it.

Many complementarians claim that egalitarians don't take the Bible seriously. What struck me was how seriously they actually did treat Scripture at this conference. These are serious students of the Word. Many of them are professors in seminaries and Christian universities, with doctorates and decades of faithful teaching and/or pastoral work to their names. They carefully parsed the Greek and Hebrew. They researched the ancient cultures within which the Bible was penned, including the Greco-Roman household codes.They have shown how Scriptural principles can be universally applied in each culture and time period, even if the details of how they are carried out necessarily differ by time and place. And, as Dr. Ronald Pierce explained, they teach what they do "in light of Scripture, not in spite of Scripture."

Dr. Ronald Pierce,
professor, author, speaker

The people I met were kind, caring, curious, and passionate. At times I felt out of my league when I heard what each one had been doing for God's Kingdom, but they were so humble and approachable that I still felt right at home. Never mind that I am a home schooling mother of ten who has been "at home" in my house for over 30 years, and who emerged from what I call deep patriarchy.  

God bless the work of CBE, and God bless the women and men there who are rising up to serve with liberty and justice and compassion among the heartbreaking crises in this world.

Dr. Mimi Haddad,
President of CBE

Mary Gonsior,
who works for CBE

I'll be writing more on the conference as time allows. I already posted a poem that I wrote there: No Little Women.

Blessings,
Virginia Knowles

P.S. Now I'm dreaming of the 2018 conference in Helsinki, Finland. Not much of a chance I'll get there, but who knows?

Edit to add: As an indirect result of attending this CBE conference, I am in the middle of my Master of Arts in Ministry degree at Asbury Theological Seminary. I walked right by their booth at the conference because seminary wasn't on my radar at the time. It was a long domino effect after that, but here I am, loving every minute!