Relying on friendship: A poet’s response to the suffering of loss
A woman was riding her horse in the Irish countryside when she was suddenly thrown off her steed. Her body was tossed into a river, where she drowned. Weeping above was her fiancé, Joseph Scriven. After leaving his wealthy family in Ireland, Port Hope History mentions that Scriven made his way across the ocean to Canada, in the mid 1840s. There he met Elisa Roche, who died of pneumonia just before they were to wed.
Once again, Joseph Scriven stood useless against that which killed the one he loved. His decision was not to dwell in agony though. Instead, he devoted himself to the servitude of Christ by laboring for others without pay, giving his things freely to those with nothing, and caring for widows and orphans. After he fell ill himself, a friend visited Scriven’s bedside, and noticed a poem he had written. The paper read, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”
Scriven’s life was rife with reason for abandoning God’s call. Thankfully for the orphans and widows of Port Hope, Canada, the man who wrote “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” was less concerned with his own comfort and considered the Holy Spirit’s call on his life.
The will of God was evidently in the forefront of his mind even as he laid sick as he wrote the words “Are we weak and heavy laden / cumbered with a load of care? / Precious Savior, still our refuge / take it to the Lord in prayer.”
It was not by the will of Joseph Scriven that he pressed on through difficult times. The invisible power that is the Holy Spirit allows believers to not simply struggle through hard times, but to persevere and rejoice in the Lord’s gracefulness even amid the most devastating of tests.
“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you,” John 14:26 reads.
The Holy Spirit is the bearer of light and peace — the preservation against which there is no tragedy too tumultuous to face. It is the grace of God that allows his servants rest from the weariness that life brings, and it is his power — by which Jesus rose from the dead that now dwells among those who he has entrusted with it (Romans 8:11).
Therefore, since Christ-followers have no need to fear the pangs and rustles of evil, it is only fitting that we listen intently to God’s call on our lives and respond accordingly. If we are to call God master, then his words must be the well from which we draw truth day after day. And as we do so, the Holy Spirit will sustain us even when we seem to be in a time of drought.
To live the life of a servant as Joseph Scriven will prove tiring, painful and most likely filled with loss and grief, but we were never commanded to face these things on our own. God has given us purpose in this life, and he has not abandoned us with empty hands and worried minds. God has given us a helper; he has given us a friend.
Kilker is the opinion editor for the Liberty Champion