'Saved Alone'

II Corinthians 12:9 -- "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

fateful telegram to Horatio Spafford

I can put my head there - my body rocking slowly, gently on top of waves and quiet that nearly put me to sleep. I can't see much past the bough of the boat for lack of light - but I can hear the water. I feel the salt on the wind. I can see the stars high above me blinking and winking at me, maybe weeping along with the painful beating of my own heart. Peering out into the dark Atlantic Ocean - I can see where the SS Ville du Havre ran head long into the Loch Earn in the dead of a dark night back in 1873. I can put my head there, I can feel the night, I can feel the ache along with Horatio Spafford, rocking gently on top of waves that seem to mourn the spot on the deep blue brine where a ship wreck claimed his four daughters.  I can feel the weight of the telegram, scribbled in hasty hand, tugging on him as it hides in his pocket. On it two words stood out. Saved Alone. Maybe he can hear his wife's voice in his mind, the tone she used when giving her message to the telegraph operator as she spoke those two devastating words. I can see shaky hands and ink stained fingers as Horatio tenderly, quietly put pen to paper.

On that yellowed page of hand made paper - ink bled into the fibers, pouring out the heart of a very broken man. It Is Well With My Soul - he wrote.

Perhaps, timing the connection of pen and paper with the points and troughs of the waves, he offered up his heart by capturing the words of his prayer onto sea dampened paper:

When sorrows like sea billows roll, he wrote -  Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to KNOW it is well with my soul.

Hand written poem, It Is Well With My Soul

Horatio didn't just lose his daughters. Before the collision of two ships in the night, back 1871, the great Chicago fire took his livelihood along with the old buildings that ran along cobble stoned streets. A successful attorney in The Windy City, Horatio's offices were lost in the blaze. Shortly thereafter - the ash-laden skeletal remains of his financial assets were lost to a crippling economic nose dive as 1872 sluggishly sloughed through the stale smoke and charred cavernous remains of a once booming town - and dragged itself into 1873.

A very broken man. I liken him to Job. This comparison is not a stretch at all. 

Picking up the pieces and clinging to hope with his wife, Horatio was blessed with three more children. In 1880, however, one of those three children [his only son] died at the age of four from Scarlet Fever.


Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate, and hath shed His own blood for my soul. It is well with my soul, Horatio wrote.

What did Horatio do in the wave of all this torment? in the throws of his bone-crushing grief?

 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 wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul. Is is well with my soul, he wrote.

He packed up his bags, his wife, his two daughters: toddler Bertha and new-born Grace - and moved ... to ISRAEL. Israel? Why? Because he recognized a need.  A ministry. It was in Jerusalem, a foreign land far removed from an attorney's cushy office and steady income, Horatio started a ministry called The American Colony. Through that ministry, Horatio served the poor and needy. He did NOT cling to the graveyard that was his former prosperous life. He did not move his family to the head stones that bore the names of his five deceased children and there live out his days mourning an insurmountable loss.

But Lord, 'tis for Thee, for Thy coming we wait, the sky, not the grave, is our goal; oh, trump of the angel! Oh, voice of the Lord! blessed hope, blessed rest of my soul. It is well with my soul, Horatio wrote.

Horatio Spafford

Oh death, where is thy sting? Where is thy victory oh, grave?

There is none. And the GRACE of our Lord Jesus Christ .... IS sufficient.

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight, the clouds be rolled back as a scroll; the trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend, A song in the night, oh my soul! It is well with my soul he wrote.  He lived. He served.

Billy Graham once wrote: Comfort and prosperity have never enriched the world as much as adversity. Out of pain and problems have come the sweetest songs, the most poignant poems, the most gripping stories, the most inspiring lives.

He couldn't be more right. In my short-sighted frustration and to whatever pain I might cling like a martyr in my life - I need but look back through history and see the even greater pain and loss suffered by fellow Christians. The energy expended to produce the pout expressed on my sometimes VERY self-centered face looses it's steam, the strength of the grip I use to hang on so desperately to my own perceived suffering evaporates in the face of brothers and sisters in Christ who have lived before me, around me - and will live after me - as they stubbornly perch themselves upon the solid rock of Jesus Christ and his unshakable grace.

Sweet Jesus, my Savior - your grace is sufficient. It [whatever IT might be]is, indeed, well with my soul. Because my soul was purchased with your blood.