The Song That Rose From the Deep

In November 1873, Horatio Spafford stood at the railing of a ship crossing the Atlantic, staring into cold, dark water. Days earlier, his wife Anna had sent him a two-word telegram from Wales: "Saved alone." Their four daughters — Tanetta, Maggie, Annie, and Bessie — had drowned when the SS Ville du Havre collided with an iron sailing vessel and sank in twelve minutes.

Spafford had already lost nearly everything in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Now, as the captain told him they were passing over the very waters where his children had perished, he reached for a pen. What he wrote was not a cry of rage or a manifesto of doubt. He wrote a hymn: "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 cost him everything he had left to give. It was not written from comfort but from the deepest sacrifice a human heart can make — the surrender of his own understanding to the faithfulness of the Almighty.

Sacrifice is rarely dramatic in the way we imagine. Often it looks like a grieving father choosing, in the worst moment of his life, to open his hands instead of clench his fists. It looks like trust when trust makes no earthly sense.

El Shaddai never promised us ease. He promised us Himself. And sometimes the most costly offering we lay on the altar is simply the words, "It is well."