When Peace Like a River Could Not Possibly Flow

In November 1873, Horatio Spafford stood on the deck of a ship crossing the Atlantic, staring at the cold waters that had just swallowed his four daughters. The SS Ville du Havre had collided with another vessel and sank in twelve minutes. His wife Anna survived and sent him a two-sentence telegram from Wales: "Saved alone. What shall I do?"

Spafford had already buried a son to scarlet fever. He had lost nearly everything in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Now this. When his ship passed near the spot where his children had drowned, the captain came to tell him. Spafford went to his cabin and wrote words that have carried grieving believers 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 he did not write, "I understand why this happened." He did not write, "This feels fine." He wrote that God had taught him to say it is well. Faith is not a feeling that arrives naturally in tragedy. It is a declaration we make when every circumstance screams otherwise.

Spafford's hymn endures because it tells the truth — that faith does not require the absence of sorrow. It requires the presence of the Almighty in the middle of it.