When Peace Like a River Ran Through the Storm

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. His wife Anna survived and sent him a two-word telegram from Wales that still breaks your heart to read: "Saved alone."

Spafford boarded the next available ship to join her. When the captain notified him they were passing over the place where his daughters had drowned, he went to his cabin and wrote words that Christians have been singing for over a hundred and fifty years: "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 hymn was not written from a place of comfort. It was written from the deepest valley a parent can walk through. And that is precisely what makes it a song about hope rather than denial. Spafford did not pretend the sea billows were not rolling. He acknowledged them — and then declared that the God who held him was greater than the waters that took so much from him.

Hope is not the absence of sorrow. Hope is the stubborn, grace-given ability to sing in the storm because you know the One who commands the waves.