The Sacrifice the Ocean Could Not Swallow

In November 1873, Horatio Spafford boarded a ship bound for England, crossing the same Atlantic that had just swallowed his four daughters. The steamship Ville du Havre had collided with another vessel and sunk in twelve minutes. His wife Anna survived and cabled two words from Wales: "Saved alone."

Spafford had already lost nearly everything in the Great Chicago Fire two years earlier. Now his children were gone. Every reasonable response pointed toward bitterness, silence, or rage against the Almighty.

Instead, as the captain told him they were passing near the place where the ship went down, Spafford 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 the product of comfort. It was a sacrifice — one of the costliest acts of worship ever offered. Spafford took his grief, his questions, his shattered heart, and laid them on the altar of praise.

Hebrews 13:15 calls us to "continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise." The word sacrifice means it costs something. Praise that flows from easy circumstances is reflex. The sacrifice of praise is worship that rises from the wreckage, offered with trembling hands to a God who is still good.

The Almighty never promised the sea would be calm. He promised He would be present in the storm.