When the Sea Had Taken Everything

In November 1873, Horatio Spafford stood at the railing of a ship crossing the Atlantic and stared down at the cold waters of the ocean. Somewhere beneath those waves, his four daughters had drowned just days earlier when the SS Ville du Havre collided with another vessel and sank in twelve minutes. His wife Anna survived and had cabled him two words that shattered his world: "Saved alone."

Spafford had already lost nearly everything in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Now his children were gone. And yet, passing over the very waters that had swallowed his family, he sat down and wrote words that Christians have sung 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 comfort. It was written from the deepest pit a father could stand in. Spafford did not say the circumstances were well. He said his soul was well — because his soul rested in the hands of the Almighty, not in the things the Almighty had given.

Trust is not the absence of grief. Trust is the decision to say to God, "You are still good," when nothing around you feels good at all. Spafford could not hold his daughters. But he could hold onto El Shaddai. And that was enough.