The Song Written Over an Ocean Grave

In November 1873, Horatio Spafford stood on the deck of a ship crossing the Atlantic, watching the gray waters churn beneath him. Days earlier, his wife Anna had sent him a two-word telegram from Wales: "Saved alone." Their four daughters — Annie, Maggie, Bessie, and Tanetta — had drowned when the SS Ville du Havre collided with another vessel and sank in twelve minutes.

Spafford had already buried a son to scarlet fever. He had lost much of his wealth in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Now the captain called him to the deck and told him they were passing over the place where his daughters' bodies lay somewhere in the deep.

And there, above an ocean that had swallowed nearly everything he loved, 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."

Faith is not the absence of sea billows. Faith is what enables a broken father to stand above the very waters that took his children and declare that the Almighty still holds him. Not because life is fair. Not because he understands. But because the God who walks on water has never once lost His footing.

Whatever your sea billows today, the same invitation stands: let your soul say what your circumstances cannot — it is well.