It Is Well With My Soul

"It Is Well" has always been one of my favorite hymns to sing. The lyrics are so powerful and whenever I hear them sung by a crowd of people, it's almost as if you get just a tiny glimpse into heaven. I don't know if you know the story of how the hymn came to be written, but Brother recently wrote a paper that talked about this song, and I have been reading one of the books he had about it.

Horatio Gates Spafford was a businessman who lived in Chicago. During the great Chicago fire, he lost everything - his business, his real estate investments - it all went up in flames. After the fire and dealing with all that came with that, he had the opportunity to take his family on a vacation over to Europe. At the very last minute, a business opportunity came up, so he sent his wife and 4 daughters ahead on the boat without him, planning to join them shortly after they arrived. On the way across the ocean, their boat was hit by another ship, and it sank in 12 minutes, leaving little time for people to be rescued. Not long after word of the accident reached him, Horatio received a telegram from his wife that said, "Saved. Alone." It was on the boat on the way to meet her over in Paris where she had been taken after her rescue, not long after the captain of the ship showed him the place where the boat had gone down, that he wrote the words to "It Is Well".

The book I have been reading is called, "Finding Anna" by Christine Schaub, and it is a novel - historical fiction - about the events that led to the writing of this hymn. There is a conversation towards the end of the book that Horatio has with an older woman who lost her husband years ago in a tragedy that has stuck in my head since I read it. I share part of it here....It begins with her sharing about her pastor coming to see her after her husband first died.

"He sat by my bed, opened his old Bible, and quoted promise after promise. And I believed not a word of it." She leaned forward, forcing Spafford to look her full in the face. "But then he said something I will never forget. He closed the Bible and looked at me with those piercing eyes and said, 'Even despair will run its course. What will you do, Carrie? What will you do with your life when you are ready again to live it?' He didn't wait for an answer, and I didn't have one. But the question rattled around and around in my head for days afterward. And when despair had run its course, just as he said, I had a plan. It was a small plan. And God took care of the rest." The bill arrived and Spafford paid it....He'd gone just a few steps when he heard Carrie call out, "Mr. Spafford-" He turned, and she looked at him with eyes that were both old with wisdom and bright with promise. "I know you can hardly imagine it. But one day - not tomorrow, maybe not for a full year - but one day, you will be able to look up without the weight of rage and guilt and declare, 'It is well....it is well with my soul.'"

Can I just say that I have found this to be true? The journey of healing is a funny thing. But if I've learned nothing in these last few years, I have learned that God is faithful, He does redeem and restore, He makes all things beautiful in His time, and His healing.....it is deep, it is powerful, it is painful, it is glorious, and in time, it does allow us to declare, with complete and transparent honesty, "It is well. It is well with my soul." And as I stand on the precipice of yet more change, of a new adventure, of new things happening in life even now, in the midst of uncertainty and not having all of the answers, I mean that with all that I am. As the hymn declares, "Even so, it is well with my soul."

We will all have at least one "dark night of the soul"....some may be for a night only. Some dark nights may last for years. But it is my prayer that in our dark nights, we will remember that joy comes in the morning, and that even when we can't imagine how, we will cling to our Savior, believing He will bring us to a place where we can declare the words of this hymn and mean them.

I close this post with the lyrics of the hymn that Horatio Spafford penned out of a broken heart and confused soul, trusting God to make it so.

When peace like a river attendeth my way
When sorrows like sea-billows roll
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say
It is well, it is well with my soul

Tho' Satan should buffet, tho' trials should come
Let this blest assurance control
That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate
And hath shed His own blood for my soul

My sin - oh the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin - not in part but the whole
Is nailed to His cross and I bear it no more
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul

And Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend
Even so - it is well with my soul

For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live
If Jordan above me shall roll
No pang shall be mine, for in death as in life
Thou shalt whisper Thy peace to my soul