Suffering has a strange way of turning ordinary people into storytellers. It presses the soul until words begin to drip out — sometimes as lyrics, sometimes as journal entries, sometimes as chapters that were never meant to be shared. But God has a way of taking what was written in the dark and using it to shine light for someone else.

It often begins quietly.

A songwriter sits alone at a kitchen table, staring at a blank page. The house is silent, but the heart is loud — full of questions, full of ache, full of prayers that feel too fragile to speak aloud. The pen trembles. The first line comes slowly, almost reluctantly, like a child stepping into cold water.

“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me?” — Psalm 42:5 (KJV)

That verse becomes the doorway. The songwriter steps through it, and suddenly the page is no longer blank. Suffering begins to shape the melody. Pain begins to carve the lyrics. And before long, a song is born — not polished, not perfect, but honest.

The Story Behind “What a Friend”

There are hymns we sing because they are beautiful — and then there are hymns we sing because they have carried us through nights when beauty felt impossible. “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” belongs to the second category. It was not written in a moment of inspiration, but in a moment of sorrow. And that is why it still speaks.

Joseph Scriven never intended to write a hymn. He intended to comfort his mother.

He had already buried one fiancée in Ireland — drowned the night before their wedding. He had already buried another in Canada — taken by illness just days before they were to be married. He had already given away most of his possessions, choosing to live simply and serve the poor. And now, far from home, he received word that his mother was sick and discouraged.

He could not sail across the ocean. He could not sit beside her bed. He could not hold her hand.

So he wrote.

Not a sermon. Not a theological treatise. Just a poem — a son’s attempt to remind his mother of the Friend who had carried him through every valley.

“There is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” — Proverbs 18:24 (KJV)

That verse became the heartbeat of his letter. And from it came the words that have comforted millions.

A Friend Who Bears What We Cannot

Scriven knew something about burdens. He knew what it meant to wake up with grief still sitting on the chest like a stone. He knew what it meant to pray through tears. He knew what it meant to feel alone in a foreign land.

But he also knew Jesus.

He knew a Friend who does not flinch at sorrow. A Friend who does not withdraw when the heart breaks. A Friend who carries both sins and griefs — because both crush us.

“Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.” — 1 Peter 5:7 (KJV)

Scriven wrote those truths not as a theologian, but as a man who had lived them.

Prayer: The Bridge Between Burden and Peace

One of the most powerful lines in the hymn is also one of the simplest:

“Take it to the Lord in prayer.”

Scriven had learned that prayer is not a ritual — it is a refuge. It is the place where burdens are transferred, where loneliness is met with presence, where fear is met with peace.

Prayer is not the escape from suffering. It is the place where suffering meets a Friend.

And that is why the hymn still resonates. It does not pretend life is easy. It does not deny trials, temptations, or tears. It simply tells us what to do with them.

Take them to Jesus. All of them. Every time.

The Friend Who Never Leaves

Scriven died in relative obscurity. His poem was discovered only because someone found it among his papers. When asked if he wrote it, he simply said:

“The Lord and I did it between us.”

That is the beauty of the hymn. It was written with Jesus, to comfort one person, and ended up comforting the world.

Today, when you sing it, you are joining a long line of believers who have found Jesus faithful in the darkest places. You are singing the testimony of a man who lost much — but never lost his Friend.

And you are reminding your own heart of the truth Scripture has always declared:

“I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” — Hebrews 13:5 (KJV)

The Song That Refused to Stay a Song

But some songs don’t stay songs.

Some songs don’t just linger after the last note fades — they stay with me. They follow me into the next season, whispering truths I cannot ignore. This one did exactly that. It pressed on my heart until I knew I had to write it down. It became the spark behind my book: the story of how the melody first reached me, the night it kept me from giving up, and the Scripture that held me together when everything else was falling apart.

The song didn’t just inspire me — it changed me. It became the reason I started writing chapters, the reason I began telling my story, the reason I believed God could turn my pain into something that might help someone else. That melody became my turning point, my calling, and ultimately the beginning of the book I never expected to write.

How it Began for Me

This is where I began: singing the song, letting its melody settle into me like rain soaking into dry ground. I meditate on it slowly, almost the way you watch a sunrise — not rushing it, just letting the light come as it will. And somewhere in that quiet, something begins to stir.

It feels a little like standing beside a river at dawn. At first the water is still, barely moving, holding its breath. Then, almost imperceptibly, the current awakens. A ripple here. A shimmer there. And suddenly the river is flowing — steady, alive, carrying things I didn’t know were waiting upstream.

That is what happens inside me.

As I hum the melody, words begin to rise — not forced, not manufactured, but carried to me like driftwood floating toward the shore. A phrase surfaces. Then another. Then a line that feels like it has been waiting years to be spoken. The song becomes the current, and my mind becomes the riverbed where the story begins to take shape.

In that moment, I am no longer just singing. I am receiving. I am listening. I am being led.

And before I realize it, the flow becomes too strong to ignore. I reach for a pen. I open a blank page. And the book begins — not because I planned it, but because the song awakened something that demanded to be written.

The melody becomes my invitation. The meditation becomes my opening door. And the words become my first steps.

The same suffering that birthed the lyrics now begins to birth paragraphs. The same tears that stained the piano keys now stain notebook pages. The same God who met him in the valley now meets me in the writing room.

The songwriter becomes the inspiration for the author — not because they planned it, but because pain pushed them into a story too big for a single chorus.

Suffering Sharpens the Pen

Every page carries its own hue of heartache — some dark as midnight, others soft as a fading dusk — and yet, woven between them are the quiet, surprising pages where joy begins to rise like morning light.

And somewhere in the middle of the manuscript, the I realize something sacred:

The book is not about the suffering. It is about the God who met us there.

“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” — Psalm 30:5 (KJV)

By the time the book was finished, I had changed. I was no longer writing from the wound — I was writing from the healing. The song that once carried my grief now carries my joy, my testimony.

Readers began to say things like:

“Your story sounds like mine.”
“Your suffering helped me understand my own.”

And in those moments, I realized that God had done what only God can do — He turned sorrow into song, He turned song into story, and He turned story into ministry.

Why This Matters for Every Writer

I wrote this book — Not particularly to Christians but anyone suffering from grief — my suffering is not a setback. It is a source. It is the well from which my most powerful chapters begin to flow. It is the place where God teaches me what my readers will one day need to hear.

My pain is not wasted. My story is not accidental. My song is not small.

And the Author of my faith is still writing — still shaping my story, still refining my voice, still turning my Sorrow into Song; something that can serve someone else.

Sorrow to Song by Stephen Luckett