The Hymn Written at the Edge of the Waves

In 1882, Louisa Stead sat on a beach with her husband and their young daughter Lily, watching the waves roll in. What began as a peaceful afternoon shattered when they heard cries for help — a boy was drowning. Her husband rushed into the water to save him. Neither made it back.

Louisa was left a young widow with a small child and almost nothing to live on. The grief was crushing, the future terrifying. And yet, in that season of devastation, she picked up a pen and wrote words that Christians have sung for nearly a century and a half:

'Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus, just to take Him at His Word; just to rest upon His promise, just to know, "Thus saith the Lord."

What strikes me about Louisa's story is not that she trusted God because life made sense. She trusted Him precisely when it didn't. She had watched the person she loved most disappear beneath the waves, and still she wrote about the sweetness of faith. Not blind optimism — but a deliberate leaning into the arms of the Almighty when everything else had been stripped away.

Louisa went on to serve as a missionary in South Africa for over twenty years, her life a living testimony to the words she had penned in her darkest hour.

Trust is not the absence of questions. It is the decision to rest in God's faithfulness even when the waters rise around you.