When the Song Comes After the Shipwreck

In November 1873, Horatio Spafford stood on the deck of a ship crossing the Atlantic, and the captain called him to the bridge. "This is where your daughters drowned," the captain said quietly. Just days earlier, Spafford's four daughters had perished when their ship, the Ville du Havre, collided with another vessel and sank in twelve minutes. His wife Anna survived and had cabled him two words from Wales: "Saved alone."

Spafford was no stranger to loss. Two years before, the Great Chicago Fire had wiped out his real estate investments. His young son had died of scarlet fever. Now this — four daughters gone beneath the cold Atlantic.

And yet, standing over that very stretch of ocean, Spafford reached for a pen 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 ease. It was written from the deepest valley a father could walk through. Spafford did not deny his grief. He brought it — all of it — before the Almighty and found that hope was not the absence of sorrow but the presence of God within it.

When life shatters what you love most, the God who walks on water will meet you over the deep. And sometimes, He gives you a song to sing on the way through.