The Hymn Written Over the Waves That Took Everything

In November 1873, Horatio Spafford stood on the deck of a ship crossing the Atlantic, staring down at cold, dark water. Somewhere beneath those waves, his four daughters had drowned just days earlier when the SS Ville du Havre collided with another vessel and sank within twelve minutes. His wife Anna survived and sent him a two-word telegram that still pierces the heart: "Saved alone."

Spafford had already buried a son to scarlet fever. He had lost nearly everything in the Great Chicago Fire. Now this. As the captain notified him they were passing over the very spot where his daughters perished, Spafford did something no one could have predicted. He picked up a pen and 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 hymn was not written from a place of resolution. It was written from the middle of the wound. And that is exactly where the Healer meets us. Not after we have pulled ourselves together, not once the grief has faded to a manageable ache, but right there — over the deep water, in the wreckage.

Jehovah Rapha does not wait until we are ready. He comes to us in the place where the sorrow is thickest and teaches our trembling lips a song we had no right to sing. Healing sometimes begins not when the pain stops, but when worship starts.