"When sorrows like sea billows roll"

This is a tough one.  I’m not sure why.  Bear with me as I work through the “why.”  And if you’re anything like me, you may need to do the same.

I’m not sure I’ve ever known sorrow, at least in the sense the hymn writer was speaking of.  Hurt?  Loss?  Depression?  Grief?  Sure.  Who hasn’t?  But actual sorrow?  I don’t know.  I’m even struggling to define it.  A dictionary definition just seems too glib, as if giving us a technical answer while ignoring the depth of the wound to the soul.  Words like “deep distress”, “sadness”, or “regret especially for the loss of someone or something loved” seem sadly insufficient to describe sorrow when you’re in the middle of it.

I have experienced loss.  Everyone does.  Job changes.  Faded relationships.  Family moves.  Relatives passing.  Some loss is sudden.  Some loss is gradual.  And how long you get to find (or feel) your way through it depends on life circumstances.  And those losses have caused distress, sadness, or regret.  So, I guess, technically I’ve known sorrow.

But not like Horatio Spafford.

He was a Christian, a lawyer by trade.  And a successful one, amassing wealth and much property in Chicago in the mid 1800s.  Married to Anna and blessed with five children, they were at peace and life was good.

Until it wasn’t.  In 1870, their only son died suddenly of scarlet fever.  That’s sorrow.  In 1871, the Great Chicago fire destroyed much of their properties and wealth.  More sorrow.  Two years later, Horatio sent Anna and his four daughters to England for a holiday.  He was to follow later after taking care of some business.

Then came the telegram from Anna, “Saved alone…”

Their passenger liner had collided with an iron sailing ship and sank within 12 minutes.  Over 200 perished, including his four daughters.  Sorrow upon sorrow.

Wait.  That’s what the hymn lyric for today actually says.  It’s not singular.  It’s not one sorrow that you deal with and move on.  It’s plural. Sorrow upon sorrow.  One after the other until you feel like you’re going under.  It’s as if you’re on the ocean riding out a large swell, only to top it and see an even larger one coming.  “When sorrows like sea billows roll” paints an accurate picture.  If any man understood sorrow upon sorrow, it was Spafford.   And yet, he started his hymn writing about times of peace.  Then he counterposed those times with sorrow.

Isn’t that life?  Remember Jesus’ words from yesterday?

“I have said these things to you,

that in me you may have peace.

In the world you will have tribulation.

But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

–John 16:13

Spafford set sail immediately for England.  After the ship passed the sight of the disaster that claimed his children, on a calmed sea, Spafford went into his cabin and penned this hymn, acknowledging the sorrow, yet remembering the peace.  It’s almost as if he knew that finding that balance is what gets you through one swell and prepares you for the next.

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Finally…

Hurt?  Loss?  Depression?  Grief? Job change?  Faded relationship?  Family moved?  Relatives passed?  It’s okay.  You don’t have to stay stoic to get through it.  Call it what it is.  Sorrow.  Feel it.  You’re not somehow disparaging God because you can’t stay happy in the midst of sorrow.  Jesus was called a Man of Sorrows.

But if you need to find balance, a way to move forward in the midst of it…between the swells… try to remember the times of peace.  Jesus was the Prince of That, too.

IT IS WELL // BEYOND WORDS //JIM FAULK