‘When sorrows like sea billows roll

Whatever my lot, thou has taught me to say

It is well, it is well, with my soul.’

        - Horatio Spafford

 

Horatio wrote these lyrics after financial ruin due to the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, followed two years later by the deaths of his four daughters when their ship sank on its way to England.

 

I say with my whole being, it is well.

There are so many things that say the exact opposite. In areas of my life and around the world there are challenges, imperfections, struggles and hardships. From the niggle of small troubles that get under our skin – the mess of the house, the chores to be done, to the greater tensions and interconnected complex problems to be navigated and more often endured rather than solved, to the local and global economic and political situations that have thousands upon thousands of human faces and untold repercussions.

To say that it is well, isn’t to ignore these things, or try to cast them in a more favorable light.

Rather, it is to believe that there’s a force of love that is present in all these situations and circumstances. That however great the brokenness, grief, destruction, and however far from perfect. However painfully uncomfortable, harrowing, and simply wrong things are, that there’s a note being played, a whisper being uttered – within us, beyond us, that is with us. A love, a presence of something greater than ourselves that enters in, as a witness and as one that stands ready, willing and able to hold all the messy, broken muck of it all. This same love also invites us deeper - to something stronger and greater than the disaster we might be facing.

In its witness, it's a love that acknowledges and sees what we endure – making it real and true, our experience of it something to respect. It sends a message that we don’t need to run from it, hide from it, rather, by not being alone, we can gain courage to stand in it. This seeing is a tender, heartfelt gathering us in, a recognition of suffering and loss.

It’s also a love that reminds us who we are. We itch and fidget in the uncomfortable tension between the brokenness around us and that erupts within us, and the beauty and goodness that breaks in on our daily lives, that alternately whispers and yells to us from the very core of our deepest selves. Suffering is a landscape that, with love, can lead us - after the shock of it, once we can see past the horror of it - to better understand the people we find ourselves to be in such a place. Love provides the capacity and freedom for us to take stock. We are given an opportunity to be ruthlessly honest with ourselves about who we are, and what we have brought into the situation.

Love can inspire and demand a search for an oasis, for a place of succor. At those times, may it be that we are each given a picture of hope, an image of what is Good, that flickers and burns and cannot be defeated by the weight of loss that tries to suck all life and hope in the landscape of sorrow.

Love calls us back to a deep, eternal truth. Of how precious we are. Of how we’re intimately, inextricably linked and forged to something beyond ourselves that won’t let go, won’t give in and will rise with us.

Love calls us back to the deep – and invites us deeper. To search for this source of Goodness, to enter into it, to breathe it deeply. Love invites us to hold onto it with a ferocity that is unmet by the situations and powers that want to smash hope and joy into dust.

Life is full of so many challenges and hardships. Yet, love enters in – it doesn’t run or hide. Love stands with us, and gives us permission and freedom to respond in love, authentically and with a hope that comes from knowing that beyond the pain, the destruction, the loss, there’s something deeper and greater that nothing can overcome.

 

Love is not a greeting card. Love is the wildest, most astounding, most audacious, most knowing, most victorious force you can experience. Listen. Watch. Wait. And take hold, don’t let go.  It is well.