Jesus is all the world to me,
My life, my joy, my all;
He is my strength from day to day,
Without Him I would fall.
When I am sad, to Him I go,
No other one can cheer me so;
When I am sad, He makes me glad,
He’s my Friend.
Jesus is all the world to me,
My friend in trials sore;
I go to Him for blessings, and
He gives them o’er and o’er.
He sends the sunshine and the rain,
He sends the harvest’s golden grain;
Sunshine and rain, harvest of grain,
He’s my Friend.
Jesus is all the world to me,
And true to Him I’ll be;
O how could I this Friend deny,
When He’s so true to me?
Following Him I know I’m right,
He watches o’er me day and night;
Following Him by day and night,
He’s my Friend.
Public domain hymn text (1904). Words by Will L. Thompson.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Will L. Thompson, already discussed elsewhere in this collection as author and composer of 'Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling' (hymn 22), including the account of D. L. Moody's reported deathbed tribute to that earlier hymn, wrote both the words and music of this hymn in 1904, decades after his earlier, better-known work and by this point an established, financially successful figure in the gospel-song and popular-music publishing business he had built over his career.
The hymn's structure moves through several different specific dimensions of ordinary daily human experience in turn — comfort in sadness, provision in trial, right guidance in decision-making — treating Christ's presence as relevant to the full, ordinary texture of everyday life rather than reserved only for moments of crisis or formal worship.
Thompson's own considerable success as a music publisher, discussed elsewhere in this collection, meant he wrote this hymn from a position of established financial security rather than the more precarious circumstances that shaped the writing of some other hymns in this collection, yet the hymn's own content addresses ordinary struggles — sadness, trials, the daily need for reassurance — with the same directness found in hymns written by considerably less fortunate authors.
The hymn's repeated closing phrase in each verse, simply 'He's my Friend,' echoes the same theme of Christ as personal friend found in John Newton's earlier hymn 'One There Is, Above All Others' (hymn 157 elsewhere in this collection), a recurring image across gospel hymnody of describing the relationship between Christ and the believer using the accessible, universally understood language of ordinary human friendship rather than more formal or elevated theological terminology.
