When Peace Like a River Runs Through Wreckage

In 1873, Horatio Spafford stood on the deck of a ship crossing the Atlantic, somewhere near the spot where the SS Ville du Havre had gone down just days earlier. Beneath those cold waters, his four daughters had drowned. His wife Anna survived and sent him a two-word telegram from Wales: "Saved alone."

Spafford had already buried a son to scarlet fever. He had already watched his real estate investments burn in the Great Chicago Fire. Now, staring at the ocean that had swallowed his children, he did something no grief counselor would prescribe and no therapist could explain.

He wrote a hymn.

"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 denial. Spafford was not pretending the pain away. He was reaching past the wreckage toward the God who was still there — El Roi, the God Who Sees. He was testifying that healing does not require the absence of suffering. It requires a Presence greater than the suffering.

Some of you are standing on your own deck this morning, staring at your own cold water. The Almighty is not asking you to feel fine. He is asking whether you will let Him stand there with you until "it is well" becomes not a feeling you manufacture, but a truth that holds you up.

That is where healing begins — not beyond the grief, but within it.