The Telegram That Could Not Name Him

In 1873, Chicago lawyer Horatio Spafford put his wife and four daughters on the SS Ville du Havre, bound for England. He would follow in a few days. He never saw his children again. The ship collided with an iron vessel in the Atlantic and sank in twelve minutes. All four girls drowned. His wife Anna survived and sent a two-word telegram from Wales: "Saved alone."

Spafford boarded the next available ship. When the captain told him they were passing over the spot where his daughters had perished, he went to his cabin and wrote words that have steadied grieving hearts 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."

Notice what Spafford did not write. He did not write "it is fair" or "it is fine" or "it doesn't hurt." He wrote "it is well" — because his identity was not built on what he possessed or even on the people he loved most. It was anchored in the One who held him over that dark water.

The world will name you by what you carry — your title, your family, your success. But the Almighty names you by whose you are. And that name holds when everything else sinks beneath the waves.