As we approach another Christmas season, Karen and I are so thankful for our family and friends whom we love, our church community, and the many blessings that bring us great joy. Yet, to be honest, a blanket of sadness covers us most days. One we must shake off when we rise each morning and retire for bed at night.
Our precious adult daughter, a prisoner of the drug scourge threatening the very soul of America, has not been a part of our lives for more than twelve years. We’re not certain where she’s living, or even if she's alive. Some of you with faith, some without, are also long-suffering in the midst of difficult situations. So…
Please allow me to share an inspiring true story of incomprehensible devotion that fills Karen and me with comfort. It’s the account of Horatio Gates Spafford and his wife Anna, who came to experience great tragedy and amazingly, an equal measure of joy.
Horatio and Anna were active churchgoers in Chicago in 1870, when their son Horatio Jr. died of Scarlett Fever. A year later a massive fire swept through the city and destroyed several of their properties. Three hundred people were killed and 100,000 rendered homeless. The Spaffords ignored their own losses and busied themselves assisting other Chicagoans who were grief-stricken and in deep need.
Then the worst of calamities.
In 1873 Spafford decided to take Anna and their four daughters, ages 11, nine, five, and two, on holiday in England. His friend, evangelist D.L. Moody, was scheduled to preach. Delayed by business, Horatio sent his family ahead. On November 22, their vessel was struck by an iron sailing ship, and within 12 minutes 226 souls were lost, including all of Spafford’s girls. By some miracle, Anna survived, found unconscious floating on a plank.
When she reach South Wales, she telegraphed her husband with the news. He set sail to be by her side. And enroute, the captain of his boat calculated the exact spot where his family’s vessel went down. The place where his daughters died.
He’s said to have withdrawn to his cabin and penned the beloved hymn, “It Is Well With My Soul.” (One of my personal favorites.) Here’s the first verse:
“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.”
Where does such strength and assurance come from? A pastor traveling with the survivor’s ship heard a distraught Anna say, “God gave me four daughters. Now they’ve been taken from me. Someday I will understand why.” The Spaffords had three more children, but sadness struck again. Their only son, Horatio, named after the boy who passed away earlier, and after his father, died at the age of four.
I am of the opinion that God grieves more deeply than any of us who suffer. And I believe Anna understands now why her girls were taken so young. We’ll never know this side of heaven.
It’s only through the intense suffering of my own that I can come close to understanding the depths of despair that the Staffords must have experienced.
Hard times come calling dressed in many different shades—the loss of a loved one, financial difficulties, a diagnosis that spells the end of life. Maybe it’s a season of loneliness. For Joni Eareckson Tada, an American evangelical Christian author, radio host and artist, it’s been sitting in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the shoulders down, since she was seventeen. A quadriplegic for 56 years.
She said, “True, God hates Alzheimer’s, spinal cord injury, mental illness, autism, and the rest (these conditions are all symptoms of the Fall). Yet he permits these things to accomplish something far more precious in our lives: patience, endurance, compassion for others who hurt, and refined faith and trust in God, to name a few.”
Joni shares the secret that allowed Horatio Gates Spafford to pick up the pieces of a shattered life and turn despondency into joy.
I too am thankful this Christmas season for the grace that allows Karen and me to proclaim, “It is well with my soul.”
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and a blessed holiday season to you all. If you are enjoying my Substack, please encourage others to subscribe. And thanks for following. This will be my final post for 2023, but I’ll be back in the new year. See you then!
Beautiful, Mike.
You triggered a sweet memory for me - it's still vivid in my mind's eye, coming back in surround sound. It's the Moody Church in Chicago, founded by the evangelist you mention. The massive Romanesque red brick building (something like the Colosseum in Rome) was completed in the mid-1920s - the Roaring Twenties. Inside, there are nearly 4,000 seats, a massive hard-wood pulpit, communion table, and a colossal pipe organ - boasting 4,400 pipes towering over the choir loft. I clearly remember a full church, all of us standing. Those pipes commandeered from the four rank console opened up at full volume, rattling the stain glass windows above. With hymnals open in full voice and four part harmony, we sang Spafford's "It Is Well." Somehow, keenly aware of the personal struggles of pain and loss and grief and disappointment all over the room, even in my own heart, together we declared the state of our souls. "When peace like a river..." Tears formed in my eyes then, and now. We found the strength to carry on.