The Song Written Over the Deep

In November 1873, Horatio Spafford stood on the deck of a ship crossing the Atlantic, staring down at the cold waters that had swallowed his four daughters just days earlier. The SS Ville du Havre had collided with another vessel and sank in twelve minutes, taking 226 lives with it — including Annie, Maggie, Bessie, and Tanetta. His wife Anna survived and sent him a two-word telegram from Wales: "Saved alone."

Spafford boarded the next available ship to join her. When the captain notified him they were passing over the approximate spot where the Ville du Havre went down, Spafford returned to his cabin and wrote words that still shake us a century and a half later: "When sorrows like sea billows roll... it is well, it is well with my soul."

He did not write those words because the pain had passed. He wrote them while the pain was at its deepest. That is the nature of faith — not a feeling that arrives after the storm, but a declaration made in the middle of it. Faith does not require the absence of grief. It requires the presence of the Almighty even when grief is all you can see.

The next time you sing It Is Well with My Soul, remember: those words were not written from a place of comfort. They were written over the deep. And that is exactly where faith does its most sacred work.