“What a Friend We Have in Jesus” began as a poem written in 1855 by Joseph M. Scriven, an Irish-born man living in Canada, to comfort his mother during an illness back home. The tune was added by Charles Crozat Converse in 1868.
The hymn’s message is simple and steady: every sorrow and every burden can be carried to Jesus in prayer. Scriven, who lost two women he was to marry and knew deep grief, wrote out of hard experience, and the hymn offers prayer as the answer to trouble.
One of the widely sung hymns of Protestant worship, it found a natural home in bluegrass gospel.
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