By Georgia McKee
“It is well with my soul” — a Southern staple when it’s painted on shiplap and snagged for 40% off at Hobby Lobby. My Facebook memories reminded me this week that I had today’s anthem hanging in my bedroom throughout high school and all the way through college at Belmont University. I’ll never forget being my first few months into college and thinking, “It is not well with my soul” as piles of homework stacked up on my desk and conditioning tests for softball loomed.
An endless to-do list, homesickness, the loss of a loved one, constant hospital visits — “how is it supposed to be well with my soul?” If you’re like me, you might find your eyes quivering at God when it feels like you’re saying all the right things, but life refuses to give you a break. That line quickly began to feel more like a mantra than truth, as if I was desperately trying to convince myself that everything was okay.
But maybe that’s the point: not to convince ourselves that all is well, but to surrender the inevitable — busyness, sickness, not-okayness, even death — to God. When Horatio Spafford wrote that classic hymn in 1873, he had just lost his four daughters in a tragic shipwreck in the Atlantic. As he sailed to meet his wife, who had miraculously survived, Spafford began writing “When peace, like a river” over the very waters that had taken his beloveds.
Can you imagine? Perhaps you know that feeling all too well.
In my years of looking at that Joanna Gaines-style sign, I’ve come to realize that peace isn’t a distant shore we hope to reach; it’s the current that carries us. You may not feel it circumstantially, but in this community, through this music, within this liturgy, the river of peace is already flowing, ready to carry and sustain you through whatever you’re facing.
So as you sing and meditate on these words today, I invite you to remember that deep within you is a gift from the One who loves you unconditionally and who will never leave you, especially when your soul feels anything but well. May we rest and get carried away by the giver of peace together.