The Song That Sailed Over Sorrow

In 1873, Horatio Spafford put his wife and four young daughters on the SS Ville du Havre, bound for England. He planned to follow once business in Chicago was settled. Days later, a telegram arrived from his wife Anna. Two words: "Saved alone." The ship had collided with another vessel in the Atlantic and sank in twelve minutes. All four of his daughters — Tanetta, Maggie, Annie, and Bessie — were gone.

Spafford boarded the next ship to join his grieving wife. When the captain told him they were passing near the spot where his daughters had drowned, Spafford went to his cabin and wrote the words that Christians have sung for over a century: "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 is not a denial of pain. It is a declaration that the Healer was present in the deepest wound. Spafford did not write those words because the hurt had stopped. He wrote them because the God who walked on water met him over the very waves that had taken everything.

Healing does not always mean the storm passes. Sometimes it means the Lord of all comfort draws so close that you can sing through the night. El Shaddai, the God Almighty, does not always remove the scar. But He fills it with something the world cannot explain — and no wave can drown.