All Your Anxiety

Heather Allington

Heather writes for Sunday Song Book on behalf of the The Salvation Army Oshawa. As a lifelong member of the Army, she has loved these familiar - and some less familiar - songs for many years, and enjoys researching and writing about their origins. She is a wife, mother, grandmother and retired elementary school teacher who likes trying her hand at watercolour painting and poetry writing.

Text pray to 289-768-5959

Is there a heart o’erbound by sorrow?
Is there a life weighed down by care?
Come to the cross, each burden bearing;
All your anxiety, leave it there.

CHORUS:
All your anxiety, all your care,
Bring to the mercy seat, leave it there;
Never a burden He cannot bear,
Never a friend like Jesus.

No other friend so keen to help you;
No other friend so quick to hear;
No other place to leave your burden;
No other one to hear your prayer.

Come, then, at once; delay no longer;
Heed His entreaty, kind and sweet;
You need not fear a disappointment;
You shall find peace at the mercy seat.

So much anxiety in our world today! Followers of Jesus are not exempt from sometimes succumbing to it. Colonel Edward Joy offered the invitation in this song many years ago. One may think how simpler times should have given rise to less anxiety and fewer cares, but note that Colonel Joy and his contemporaries lived through two world wars and the Great Depression. They were not strangers to grief, worry and hardship.

Edward Joy was born in Canterbury, England, in 1871. There he became a Salvationist, but later he attended Folkestone Corps, where he was a bandsman. He became a Salvation Army officer at the age of 23 and served in one corps and many varied administrative appointments internationally throughout his lifetime. He lived in England in retirement from 1938 until his “Promotion to Glory” in 1949.