The Song That Cost Everything

In November 1873, Horatio Spafford stood on the deck of a ship crossing the Atlantic, passing near the spot where his four young daughters — Annie, Maggie, Bessie, and Tanetta — had drowned just days earlier when the steamship Ville du Havre collided with another vessel and sank in twelve minutes. His wife Anna had survived and cabled him two words from Wales: "Saved alone."

Spafford had already buried a son to scarlet fever. He had lost most of his real estate holdings in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. And now this. Four small coffins he would never see.

Somewhere over that cold Atlantic water, 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 comfort. It was written from the deepest sacrifice a parent can know — the surrender of his children and his own understanding to the sovereign hand of the Almighty. Spafford did not pretend the pain was gone. He sang through it.

Scripture tells us that sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit (Psalm 51:17). Not a heart untouched by grief, but one that still turns toward the Father in the middle of it. Spafford's hymn endures because it tells the truth: real worship sometimes costs us everything we have — and we sing anyway.