mattbraunlin
Member
It Is Well With My Soul
Have you ever heard of a man named Horatio Spafford? Neither had I until a couple of days ago.Horatio Spafford was a successful 19th century lawyer, a devout man of God, who also had a great talent for writing poetry. And God found this man worthy of teaching the world a lesson so profound and desperate that I cannot help but share it with you.
In 1871, Spafford and his wife Anna lost their four-year-old son to scarlet fever. They also lost a fortune when a large proportion of their business interests were destroyed in the great Chicago fire that same year.
Two years later the Spafford family decided to take a healing vacation to Europe. Business issues caused Horatio to stay behind. On this most fateful of journeys, the ship carrying his family was struck by another vessel, and sank in twelve minutes.
His four daughters, Annie, Maggie, Bessie and Tanetta, all perished along with two hundred others.
His wife survived, and upon reaching Wales sent Horatio a telegram beginning with two words: Saved alone.
Horatio soon journeyed himself to be reunited with his wife. The captain of the vessel, aware of Horatio's situation, summoned him at the appropriate time and informed him that they were at the location of the wreckage of the ship that had claimed his daughters.
Horatio retired to his cabin and wrote a poem which would come to be one of the most beloved hymns in the English-speaking world. Its first verse read:
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.
I sought to write out some eloquent lesson after recounting this unbelievable chain of events to you. But what can I possibly say to do justice to a man who could find peace and gratitude in the midst of the destruction of his entire world?
All I can do is hope. All I can do is hope that my faith could one day begin to measure up to Horatio Spafford's.
I have endured great pain in my life. But though I have no children of my own, I think of my little niece and nephew, and how readily I would go through it all again to protect them from the fate suffered by Annie, Maggie, Bessie and Tanetta. And selfishly, to protect myself from the murky wasteland which would become my life were this to happen.
There is no answer to this most heartrending of all human experiences. We can give up and waste away, or we can trust in God in spite of it and keep marching as the soldiers we are. I pray for all grieving parents who might be reading this and I say: you cannot learn anything from me. Your grief is greater than any I have endured. But I pray that you might find strength in the story of this man, who took the most crushing, devastating tragedy and allowed God to use it to bring comfort to grieving souls all over the world.