The Song Written Over the Ocean's Deepest Grief

In 1873, Horatio Spafford stood on the deck of a ship crossing the Atlantic and asked the captain to tell him when they passed over the spot where the SS Ville du Havre had gone down. Days earlier, that vessel had carried his four daughters. All four drowned. His wife, Anna, survived and sent him a telegram with two shattering words: "Saved alone."

When the captain called Spafford to the deck and pointed down at the dark water beneath them, something happened that defies every natural instinct of the human heart. Spafford went to his cabin and wrote the words that congregations around the world still sing a century and a half later: "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 was not denial. That was not numbness. That was faith — raw, bleeding, and anchored to something deeper than the ocean floor beneath him.

Faith does not mean the absence of grief. Spafford wept for his daughters for the rest of his life. But faith gave him a place to stand when there was no ground left. It gave him a song when silence would have been easier.

Some of you are sailing over your own deep waters right now. The Almighty is not asking you to pretend the water is not deep. He is asking you to trust that He is deeper still.