When the Ocean Could Not Drown the Song

In November 1873, Horatio Spafford received a telegram from his wife Anna that contained just two words: "Saved alone." Their four daughters — Annie, Maggie, Bessie, and Tanetta — had drowned when the SS Ville du Havre collided with another vessel and sank in the Atlantic. Spafford had already buried a son to scarlet fever and watched his real estate investments burn in the Great Chicago Fire. Now this.

He booked passage on the next ship to join his grieving wife in Europe. When the captain notified him they were passing over the approximate spot where his daughters had perished, Spafford went to his cabin and wrote words that have ministered to the broken 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."

That hymn was not written from a place of painlessness. It was written from a place of healing — which is something altogether different. Healing does not mean the wound never existed. It means the wound no longer governs the story. Spafford stood over the very waters that took everything from him, and instead of a curse, he offered a song.

The Almighty does not always calm the sea. But He walks with us through it, and sometimes — right there in the deepest water — He gives us a melody we never could have learned on dry land.