“This my song through endless ages: Jesus led me all the way.”

Hymn: “All the Way My Savior Leads Me” – Fanny Crosby (1820-1915)
Tune: ALL THE WAY

Have you ever said, “I thought that song would never end?”

I took my junior high choir to Dallas to see THE WIZ when the movie first came out. If you’ve never seen it, let me just say that it is a terminal musical. I remember somewhere into the third hour the little boy sitting next to me said out loud, to Diana Ross, “Just click your heels together, and let’s get this over with!” I almost said, “Amen.”

I have some good news for you: there is a song that has already started -- a tune taken up by the earliest Christians. It’s been humming its way through history for almost two thousand years now, and you and I are a part of it. The song is “Jesus got me here.” Or as Fanny Crosby put it, “Jesus led me all the way.”

It’s a retrospective song… an introspective (here-and-now) song… and a prospective song, anticipating the fact that when our lives have ended, the lyric will still hold true. Since I joined this song in my twelfth year, Jesus has led me to where I am now… and will lead me to where I’m going.

Even at those times I wrangled my hand from his loving grasp and ran ahead of him… or ran away from him totally… he maintained his position of leadership, eventually leading me back to himself.

Some people start the day saying, “This is the day the Lord has made…” Perhaps I will take up the habit of putting my head on my pillow at the end of every day, singing this 12-word hymnline to myself before I go to sleep, because no matter what kind of day it may have been, “Jesus led me all the way” through it.

I thought that song would never end… and indeed, it won’t!

A Congregational Singing of This Hymn

Personal Note: One whose entire life had been committed to leading others in the song of the redeemed joined the eternal hallelujah chorus yesterday. Everybody’s friend Dan McClinton took up the coda of the song of endless ages, knowing that Jesus led him all the way through a life of music ministry. I’m not sure if he’s playing his clarinet/saxophone or singing tenor; but I AM sure he’s carrying his part with all the enthusiasm he did in this life.