It Is Well With My Soul...

IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL…The hymn, ‘It is well with my soul’, has been a tremendous blessing to thousands since it was written in the last century. But the back-story as to why it came to be it even more tremendous. Like so many other blessings, it emerged out of pain. The author, Horatio Spafford put his wife and two daughters on an ocean liner making their way from the east coast to England. Not to long into the voyage, news reached back that the ocean liner had sunk. Horatio waited anxiously for any word as to whether his wife and daughters had survived. After a few days he received a telegram from his wife in England that simply read, “Saved, Alone”! Horatio immediately boarded the next ship to go and be with his wife and grieve their loss. When they got to the place where the previous ship had sunk, the captain came and got Horatio, took him to the rail and told him, “this is where the ship sank. This is where your daughters are”. As he leaned over the rail & stared into the dark waters, the words of this hymn came flowing into his soul. At a time when there should have been nothing but the deepest of lonely grief, there emerged a flow of words & tones that were unexplainable. A gutteral comfort, in the form of a song of surrender. By the way, this hymn has undoubtedly been sung at funerals and times of loss more than any other. Now that we can imagine him on that ship deck that day…Let’s look at the words again:
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”!
May Christ do for us what He did for Horatio…and in the time when grief should reign alone…the pain is tempered with a hymn of comfort. ~Verlon