The Hymn Written Over the Atlantic

In 1873, Chicago lawyer Horatio Spafford put his wife and four daughters on the SS Ville du Havre, bound for England. Business had delayed him, but he would follow soon. Nine days into the crossing, the ship collided with an iron vessel and sank in twelve minutes. All four of his daughters perished. His wife Anna survived and cabled him two words from Wales: "Saved alone."

Spafford had already buried a son to scarlet fever. He had already watched the Great Chicago Fire consume nearly everything he owned. Now, boarding a ship to rejoin his grieving wife, he sailed over the very waters where his children had drowned. The captain called him to the deck when they reached the spot.

And there, in the middle of the Atlantic, over fathoms of grief no human heart should have to carry, Spafford 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."

He did not write those words because the pain had passed. He wrote them because his faith had not. That is the perseverance scripture speaks of — not the absence of suffering, but the refusal to let suffering have the final word. As Paul wrote, "We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair."

The Almighty does not always calm the sea. But He stands with us over the deep, and sometimes that is where our strongest song is born.