Oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!

I’m sure most of us have heard and sang the song “It is Well with My Soul.”  The third verse always stands out to me, and for some reason was in my head all day after we sang it during Church on Sunday. In case you don’t recall it specifically, here’s the third verse:

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

Regardless of our circumstance, this thought should certainly bring us much joy. What else in our world could matter more to us than that every awful wretched sin we’ve committed is no longer our burden? How could we not praise God for His great grace in swapping our sin with Christ’s righteousness?
What always strikes me about this verse is how the author, Horatio Spafford, was so caught in the bliss of this thought that he could not simply say his sin is nailed to the cross. It’s like when you’re trying to tell a friend about something great that happened to you and your words are racing through all sorts of details before you finally spill it out. Horatio Spafford’s level of excitement and joy over this thought so caused his words to overflow - he could not contain it. He starts to say something about his sin, but must pause to let us know how excited he is about this. He starts again, but must pause to clarify the scope and magnitude of what he’s describing.
What’s even more remarkable is the context in which this was written. Having already lost his only son in 1871 and had his livelihood destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire, Spafford planned to take his wife and four daughters to Europe. A business matter came up and he had to send his family ahead of him while he took care of it. The ship carrying them, the S.S. Ville du Havre, collided with a sailing ship and sank rapidly. All of his daughters died, and his wife sent him a telegram that simply said, “Saved alone.” Spafford was soon after able to follow his wife and meet up with her, but penned “It is Well with My Soul” as his shipped passed near where his daughters died. It’s worth noting that Spafford and his wife eventually moved to Jerusalem where they raised two more children and founded a mission for the poor.
The death of a single child can break a parent and has stressed some marriages to the point of divorce. Men often fall into the deepest of depressions when it seems all that they’ve worked for in a career has been wiped away to nothing. How does a man survive those events, in addition to the deaths of four more children, and pen a song that hold such excited bliss?
Brothers and sisters, only the rapturous love of God demonstrated so lavishly upon us by His grace through the atonement of our sins can produce in a man such steadfast and resilient joy. Only meditation on Christ’s shed blood for our souls can make even the deepest of sorrows caused by this world grow strangely dim.
By Roger Overton