Daily Verse
Monday, May 25, 2026
Gratitude and Thanksgiving
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Monday's Reflection
Job 1:21 — And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.
Horatio Spafford was a Chicago lawyer who had already lost most of his real estate investments in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Two years later, hoping to give his family a rest after that difficult season, he arranged a trip to Europe. Business kept him in Chicago at the last moment, so he sent his wife Anna and their four daughters ahead on the steamship Ville du Havre. He would follow shortly after. On November 22, 1873, the ship was struck by another vessel in the North Atlantic. It sank in twelve minutes. All four of Spafford's daughters drowned. Annie was eleven. Maggie was seven. Bessie was five. Tanetta was two. Anna was pulled from the water unconscious and survived. She sent her husband a telegram from Wales with four words: "Saved alone. What shall I do?"
Spafford booked immediate passage to join his wife. As the ship crossed the Atlantic, the captain called him to the bridge and pointed to the charts. They were passing over the exact spot where the Ville du Havre had gone down, where his four daughters lay three miles beneath the water. Spafford returned to his cabin and wrote the words that millions of people have sung in the hardest moments of their own lives ever since: "When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll — whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul." He did not write those words because the pain was gone. He wrote them in the middle of it, standing over his daughters' grave, choosing to say what he believed about God rather than what he felt about his circumstances.
That is what Paul means by giving thanks in everything. Not a performance of happiness. A choice, made in the deepest grief, to say: God is still God. It is still well.
Prayer: Lord, give us Spafford's faith — not a faith that pretends pain is not real, but a faith that says it is well even when nothing feels well. Teach us to anchor our gratitude in You rather than in our circumstances. Amen.