It Is Well

Lucy Cunningham-Schultz drops off her Kids Radio news story at Whit's End and finds John Whittaker listening to a tape of his church choir. One song catches her ear, and Whit tells her it is a famous hymn called "It Is Well With My Soul," written by a man named Horatio G. Spafford. Lucy is surprised to learn that such a hopeful song was born out of almost unbelievable tragedy, and Whit begins to tell her Spafford's remarkable true story.

Spafford has built a successful law practice in Chicago in the years just after the Civil War. He is wealthy, deeply devoted to God, and close friends with the great preacher D.L. Moody and the hymn writer Phillip Bliss. He and his wife have five children, four girls and a boy. Then Dr. Rawlings brings terrible news: their little boy has pneumonia, and though Spafford and Bliss pray through the night, the child dies.

Four months later, Spafford is still grieving. He has invested his fortune in property along Lake Michigan, planning housing and a surprise gift for Moody's ministry, when a huge fire sweeps the shoreline and burns it all. The fire chief can do nothing but let the buildings go. With his business concerns gone, Spafford decides to take his family to Great Britain to join Moody's evangelistic campaign. But on the eve of the voyage, Mr. Kramer of the zoning commission arrives at the door: unless Spafford appears at a meeting in two days, he may lose what remains of his property. So he sends his wife and four daughters - Tanetta, Maggie, Bessie, and Annie - ahead by ship, promising to follow in a few days.

At sea, the captain gives Mrs. Spafford and the girls a cheerful tour of the ship and lets each of them ring the ship's bell. Then fog rolls in, another vessel looms out of the mist, and the ship goes down in only twelve minutes. Back in Chicago, Spafford shows Bliss the telegram from his wife. It reads, "Saved alone." All four daughters have drowned.

Spafford sails on the next ship to join his wife, and when the vessel passes near the spot where his daughters were lost, he goes up on deck to pour out his heart to God. Remembering that God gave His own Son, and that because of Jesus he will see his children again, he finds the words that become his greatest testimony: "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."

Spafford cables the poem to Bliss, who sets it to music, and it becomes one of the best-loved hymns of all time - a song that has helped countless people in times of trouble to say, "It is well with my soul."