A Hymn Written Over the Deep

In 1873, Horatio Spafford stood on the deck of a ship crossing the Atlantic. The captain had just informed him they were passing over the spot where the steamship Ville du Havre had gone down weeks earlier. On that ship were Spafford's four daughters — Annie, Maggie, Bessie, and Tanetta. All four had drowned. His wife Anna survived and cabled him two words that broke the world open: "Saved alone."

Spafford had already buried a son to scarlet fever. He had lost nearly everything in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. And now, standing over the Atlantic grave of his children, he did something no one could have predicted. He wrote.

"When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll — whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul."

That is not the language of denial. It is the language of grace. Grace does not mean the absence of sorrow — it means the presence of God in the deepest sorrow. It is the Almighty reaching into the wreckage of a life and giving a person the impossible ability to sing.

You may be standing over your own deep water today. Grace is not a promise that the storm won't come. Grace is the voice of the Holy One whispering, even now, "I am here."