It Is Well...

You can click on the icon to the right and listen to the song It Is Well.

I have been blessed this week to have this song resound in my ears multiple times. Sunday night, our Sunday School class met for fellowship and we joined in singing this song as well as other hymns. We talked about the line, "My sin, O the bliss of this glorious tho't, My sin not in part But the whole Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, O my soul!"

The reason I chose this version for this post: I heard all of the people singing It Is Well. Don't you know there were many people who came that night and things weren't good in their life. They may have lost a love one, a child might have been sick with cancer, they might have just fallen into the same sin that they continue to struggle with, perhaps they felt so alone and unloved, and yet, they were able to passionately sing "It Is Well." They might have felt far, far away from the Lord.

I love the book Then Sings My Soul. I went to get the book from our bookshelf and it was marked on this song.

Here is the history behind this beautiful hymn that was written in 1873.

"Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all." Ps. 34:19

The great Chicago fire engulfed the Windy City in 1871. Horatio G. Spafford was an attorney and extremely invested in real estate and lost a fotune. Arond the same time, The Spafford's only son was killed at the age of 4 of scarlet fever. In his grief he plunged himself into rebuilding the city and helping the 100,000 that had been left homeless.
In November of 1873, he and his wife and daughters decided to go to Europe. Horatio was close to D.L. Moody and Ira Sankey and wanted to visit their evangelistic meetings in Europe and then enjoy a vacation.

He was held up in New York by a matter of urgency and decided to send Anna, his wife and their 4 daughters, Maggie, Tanetta, Annie, and Bessie ahead. He felt uneasy as he loaded them in the cabin on the luxury French liner Ville du Havre and moved them to a room closer to the bow of the ship. He assured them he would join them soon.

On November 22, 1873 the ship collided with an iron sailing vessel and water began to flood into their ship. Loved ones were ripped from each other, children vanished into the black waters, thus was the nightmare of the sinking of the Ville du Havre. She sunk within 2 hours. The 226 deaths included Maggie, Tanetta, Annie, and Bessie. Anna was found clinging to a piece of wreckage. There were 47 survivors. Upon her arrival in Cardiff, Wales, she sent a cable to her husband: "Saved Alone."

As Hortio sailed to meet his bride one cold December night, the captain took Horatio aside and said, "I believe we are now passing over the place where the Ville du Havre went down." As he went back to his cabin he was unable to sleep he said to himself, "It is well; the will of God be done."

Later he wrote the famous and moving hymn known as "It Is Well."

May it be so in our lives as Frances R. Havergal said, "now, "Thy will be done" is not a sigh but a song."