When Peace Like a River Was Born from Ruin

In 1873, Horatio Spafford put his wife and four daughters on the SS Ville du Havre, bound for England. He planned to join them after finishing business in Chicago. He never saw his daughters again. The ship collided with another vessel in the Atlantic and sank in twelve minutes. All four girls perished. Anna Spafford survived and sent her husband a two-word telegram from Wales: "Saved alone."

Spafford had already lost nearly everything in the Great Chicago Fire two years earlier. His young son had died of scarlet fever shortly before that. Now this. He boarded the next available ship to join his grieving wife. When the captain notified him they were passing over the spot where the Ville du Havre went down, Spafford went to his cabin and wrote the words that would become one of the most beloved hymns in Christian history: "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 comfort. It was written from the deepest sacrifice a parent can know, penned over the very waters that took his children. And yet Spafford surrendered his grief to the Almighty, choosing trust over bitterness.

Some of the most powerful worship ever offered to God has come not from abundance but from loss. When we bring our broken hallelujahs to the altar, the Most High receives them as the holiest kind of praise — the kind that costs us everything.