何瑞修·斯帕福（Horatio G. Spafford）. Explore “It Is Well with My Soul”: song information and official sources.
Hope for the end of the age · Victory and the crown
Spafford lost four daughters in the same shipwreck. His wife survived and sent a telegram beginning “Saved alone”, then asking what she should do. He crossed the Atlantic and is said to have written this hymn as the ship passed the place of the disaster. Notice its restraint. It never says there is no sorrow. Its opening first acknowledges both river-like peace and wave-like grief, taking both seriously. The second stanza turns directly to the cross: peace rests on sin being nailed there, rather than improved circumstances. The final stanza looks towards the Lord's return. The hymn carries great weight at funerals. Precisely because of the suffering behind it, singers should not casually urge mourners to be like its author.
Funerals and memorials, after major loss; teaching on Romans 8 or trust amid suffering.