Storm tossed

When sorrows like sea billows roll is a lyric from a popular old hymn penned after a man’s personal tragedy. After losing his little boy in the great Chicago fire of 1871, hymn composer, Horatio Spafford, later lost the rest of his children—all four of his girls—in a ship accident at sea. Despite the heartbreak, Spafford remained close to Christ and wrote the hymn It is Well with My Soul, knowing that His comfort would be sufficient for anything.

Like Abraham, Stephen, Job, David, Paul, Daniel, Joseph and many other saints of old, they each leave a witness of hardship and persecution. With their dire troubles—even unto death—these men maintained an abiding faith as they rested in the spiritual arms of Jesus. These biblical legends are our great cloud of witnesses. Each one can inspire today’s believers as we share and follow these witnesses of the faith through God’s word while we travel our own individual path.

Some by the fire and some by the flood…but all through the blood of Jesus are we sifted and refined like choice silver and gold. It would seem like Horatio Spafford had been sifted with both water and fire in the Lord’s sanctification of this godly man. Like all of them, we can be a witness, too, and only through the power of God.