hymns, vol. 1, no. 2: it is well with my soul

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ON SORROWS & SEA BILLOWS

If creation is “very good” and if God is the creative Reality whose animating spirit and sustaining word sings it to life, and if we are really called to rest in it, then we must confront an impossible question: why is there suffering? Why would a good God — an omnipotent and omniscient God! — allow pain and darkness and war and cancer and hatred and everything else that distances us from the inherent goodness of the gift and the Giver? How could a loving God possibly allow it to exist at all?

It’s a question one might ask of Horatio Spafford (1828 – 1888), a comparatively successful American lawyer who happened to make a substantial investment in Chicago real estate in the spring of 1871. Later that year, the great Chicago fire destroyed the city and left in ashes a majority of the real estate owned by this husband and father of four daughters. The aftermath of the damage took its toll on the family, and they decided to take a family trip to England in the fall of 1873. However, because of delays in his business dealings, Horatio was left to send his wife and daughters ahead of him on the S.S. Ville du Havre, which left New York for England on November 15, 1873. Weeks later, Horatio received a shattering telegram from his wife Anna: “Saved alone. What shall I do?” In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the Ville du Havre had collided with another ship, killing 226 onboard — including all four of the Spaffords’ daughters.

When Horatio, later on his way to England to be with Anna, passed over the waters where his family was taken from him, he wrote these words:

“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.”

What did Horatio Spafford see in those waters? Undoubtedly he saw the reflection of his own pain, staring into the dark depths that took the four loves of his life. I am sure that the waves below received salty tears from tired eyes. And yet, I wonder what else he saw that drew him beyond his lot and reminded him to say “it is well with my soul.”

Perhaps he looked into the depths and caught a glimpse of Reality. I wonder if Horatio Spafford thought of Psalm 42 as deep called out to deep and he was given the grace to receive the vastness of the moment as it is. Perhaps he was able to momentarily see into the everything-ness of God and peer beyond the illusory veil that separates us from the truth that everything is grace. Somehow — perhaps the only explanation is that it came from the Other — it seems that in that moment he was suddenly able to accept the entirety of his lot and simply say yes to it.

I wonder what our lives would look like were we open to this grace as well. With what ease could we flow through creation if we simply received this present moment, embracing it rather than resisting? What could it mean to live in the holy freedom of a sustained, whole-hearted and full-throated yes to both Day and Night? What resilience would it bring! And though it may not give any satisfying answer to the ever-looming question surrounding the why of suffering, perhaps it could at least illuminate a way through it.

This arrangement of it is well with my soul attempts to embrace the reality of suffering in all its dissonances and suspended moments. The stilled rhythmic motion ebbs and flows like the persistence of time, and the hanging harmonies taste the ever-present bitterness that can be found in each and every moment. But, perhaps more importantly, the releases — achieved with precise pedaling and observed rests — allow the tensions to pass and be folded into an even greater harmony. And finally, as the chorus faces the depths with resolve, perhaps you, too, can face this moment and come to the same conclusion as its author: it, indeed, is well.