When the Sea Gave Back a Song

In November 1873, Horatio Spafford received a telegram from his wife Anna that read simply: "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 boarded 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 the words that millions have sung since: "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 what Spafford did not write. He did not write, "It doesn't hurt." He did not write, "I understand why this happened." He wrote that God had taught him to say it is well — which means there was a learning, a process, a slow and painful mending that the Almighty walked him through, one breath at a time.

That is how Jehovah Rapha, the God Who Heals, so often works. He does not erase the wound. He composes something through it — something that could not have existed without the breaking. Healing does not always mean the absence of scars. Sometimes it means the scar begins to sing.

Whatever sea you are passing over today, the same God who met Spafford in that cabin is present with you now.