No One Ever Cared for Me Like Jesus

My teenage years weren’t very dramatic. There was family, school, sport, music and church. I was learning about relationships, faith and life…

1966 was a significant year… O-levels, England won the World Cup, a trip to Portugal… and going several times to hear Billy Graham at Wembley Stadium. Each time George Beverly Shea sung a solo. I bought his ‘song book’; I learnt to play some of his songs on the piano. One was ‘No one ever cared for me like Jesus’:

I would love to tell you what I think of Jesus,
Since I found in Him a friend so strong and true;
I would tell you how He changed my life completely,
He did something that no other friend could do.

No one ever cared for me like Jesus,
There’s no other friend so kind as He;
No one else could take the sin and darkness from me,
O how much He cared for me.

My teenage faith was a young and simple faith in a Jesus who was my caring friend. He  gave me a person to live with, a purpose to live for and a power to live by. It was a sincere commitment to follow this Jesus wherever he led me through my life.

All my life was full of sin when Jesus found me,
All my heart was full of misery and woe;
Jesus placed His strong and loving arms about me,
And He led me in the way I ought to go.

I look back and see how and where this Jesus has led me over the subsequent sixty years… marriage, children, grandchildren… college, university, work, retirement… homes, schools, churches, friends… forgiving my inadequacies and failures, demonstrating his strength and love, leading me each step of the way, bringing me to today.

Every day He comes to me with new assurance,
More and more I understand His words of love;

But I’ll never know just why He came to save me,
Till someday I see His blessed face above.

No one ever cared for me like Jesus,
There’s no other friend so kind as He;
No one else could take the sin and darkness from me,
O how much He cared for me.

Today I still hold on to my faith of sixty years ago. My teenage faith has grown, matured, evolved. I know that this same Jesus brings his loving assurance and caring friendship to my ‘today’ and whatever future ‘todays’ may be left for me.

Sixty years ago, I thought I had all the answers… then I discovered that I didn’t have all of the answers… then I realised I had very few of the answers… now I’m not sure I even know the questions.

What I do know is that ‘no one ever cared for me like Jesus’, and this same Jesus will continue to be my caring friend ‘till someday I see his blessed face above’.