'It Is Well With My Soul' - Congregational hymns like this one tell the story of God's grace - past, present and future.

by Gracia Grindal

Since the beginning, Christians have sung songs both in times of sorrow and joy. But it was the great Reformers—Martin Luther and John Calvin, and John and Charles Wesley—who are best remembered for implementing congregational hymns into services. As Christianity spread, these hymns traveled the world. And as the faith grew, so did the catalog of treasured songs.

Hymns that we now sing Sunday after Sunday often are attached to stories rich in real-life experience. And sometimes, knowing the story behind a particular hymn can make its words even more comforting.

Take the events that inspired the hymn “It Is Well With My Soul,” for example. Horatio Spafford, a successful Chicago lawyer and investor, was grieving the death of his young son when much of his real estate holdings burned down in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Two years later, a ship carrying his wife, Anna, and their four daughters to England went down, and Spafford received a telegram from Anna with the words “saved alone.” Life seemed to be painfully against him.

Spafford rushed to board a ship to be with his wife in England, and as that ship approached the spot at sea where his daughters had perished, the story goes, Spafford cried out to God with the lines:

“When peace, like a river, attendeth my way/ When sorrow like sea billows roll/ Whatever my lot Thou hast taught me to say/ It is well/ It is well with my soul.”

Several years later, Spafford’s good friend and contemporary, Philip Paul Bliss—one of the most famous and successful hymn writers of the day—wrote a melody for Spafford’s words, giving us “It Is Well With My Soul.”

The hymn that Spafford and Bliss left us gives a glimpse into one man’s sorrow and reverence for God’s grace. In the midst of heart-wrenching pain, Spafford was able to turn to God and utter words not filled with anger but with hope.

Drawing from real-life experience, this hymn reminds us that when “sorrow like sea billows roll,” the grace of God often is extravagantly given. It is in our suffering that we can claim God’s steadfast love.

And so, we sing this hymn and other songs that are the foundation of our faith, joining our voices with those of the millions who have gone before us and finding comfort in God’s grace—present in the midst of circumstances past, present and future.

Gracia Grindal is a professor of rhetoric at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her hymns and hymn translations are in hymnals used by Lutherans, Episcopalians, Mennonites, Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics and Disciples of Christ, among others.

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