P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

SINKING SHIPS AND CELEBRATIONS

There’s a verse in the book of James that you have to read about six times before you decide not to highlight it with your cursor and just delete it right off of your Zondervan CD-ROM. Because it just plain and simple doesn’t make sense. Our topic all this week is joy — in fact, MADE FOR JOY. As in, “You and I as children of God are made to be creatures who experience joy.” But now here’s the verse. James 1:2:

“Consider it pure joy” — not just joy, notice, but PURE joy — “my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds.”

Isn’t that quite a verse? Consider it pure joy to face trials. Your gas bill triples: pure joy. You get a ticket for sliding through a red light late on Saturday night: pure joy. There’s a mudslide and a huge tree comes right down on your new convertible, or right onto the addition you just put on your new home. “A sheer gift,” says The Message paraphrase, “when tests and challenges come at you from all sides.” And you lift up your hands to heaven and say to the Lord, “Father God, You’re so good to me. Praise Your name!” Now, friend, do you really? Is it pure joy for you when things go terrible and you face trials?

Yesterday we shared a terrific sound bite from William Vander Hoven, and it went like this:

“Life need not be easy to be joyful. Joy is not the absence of trouble but the presence of Christ.”

Well, that’s a sentimental theory, isn’t it, friend? But sometimes we wonder whether the presence of Christ plus that bashed-up car really adds up to joy. Is Jesus enough, when you’ve just lost someone you loved?

Many of you, I’ve sure, have heard the story of Horatio Spafford. He was in the city of Chicago when the terrible fire of 1871 just about wiped out the city. He was a lawyer, and while his family survived the blaze, he did lose a whole chunk of personal real estate in the city’s pricy North Shore area. But he began to dig out of the hole, and also help others who had been badly singed — either physically or financially — by the catastrophe. Spafford, you see, was a Christian. He was doing pro bono work before pro bono was hardly a legal expression. He was also a friend of the great evangelist Dwight L. Moody, so the Christian principle of helping the poor and destitute was one he had learned at the feet of the incomparable preacher.

After two years of helping people sift through the ashes and rebuild their lives, Horatio Spafford decided to take his family on a little trip away from all the soot and sorrow of Chicago. Moody and Ira Sankey were over in Europe getting ready for a crusade, so it seemed like a good time to take a boat ride across the Atlantic, help with the meetings, and then enjoy some vacation time. Mr. Spafford had one last little bit of business to attend to, so he put his wife and four young daughters on a ship bound for France, and promised them he’d be over soon to meet them.

Well, many of you have heard the story. The Ville du Havre got to Newfoundland, had a collision with a British sailing ship, the Loch Earn, and took just twelve minutes to sink to the bottom. Out of hundreds on board, there were just 47 survivors. His wife Anna managed to hold onto a piece of wreckage until rescue came, but Horatio’s four little girls — Maggie, Tanetta, Annie, and Bessie — all met their ends in a watery grave.

So the story goes, Mrs. Spafford managed to send a telegram to her husband, and it had just two words on it: “Saved alone.” Another Internet rendering of the story has four words to the cryptic message: “I alone am well.” Either way, it was an incalculable loss for Mr. Horatio Spafford, who had lost his only son, Horatio, Jr., to scarlet fever just three years earlier.

Well, the story doesn’t wrap up there. The grieving father, as you can understand, hastened to New York, and sailed to Europe on the next available steamer, so that he could be with his heartbroken wife. And somewhere along the way, as he stood alone on the windswept bridge of that ship, he had to think about the fact that he would never again in this life hear the voices of his little girls, feel their caresses or kisses, tuck them into bed. “Consider it pure joy, my brothers”? “Whenever you face trials of many kinds”? “Because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance”?

Well, Horatio Spafford went down to his cabin and began to write down these words we all know so well.

“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.”

As the ship passed over the dark waters off of Newfoundland, the captain called this young father over to the railing and said very gently:

“To the best of my calculations, Mr. Spafford, this is where the tragedy occurred and your four little daughters were drowned.”

And Mr. Horatio Gates Spafford arrived in Europe, held his wife for a long time, and then said to Pastor Moody: “It is well. The will of God be done.” Even with all five of his children gone, he was able to hold fast to the principle of joy. Was it giddy good humor? No. A frivolous ignoring of the terrible reality? No. But was it a recognizing of the unshakeable fact that God was still in charge of things, that Satan’s arrows were no match for the defenses of Christ? Yes, friend, that’s exactly what it was.

If you look at the hymn as it’s published today, you see another familiar name. The tune, composed by the incomparable P. P. Bliss, is entitled “Ville Du Havre,” after the ship which capsized with such a great loss. But I have to register a complaint today, because in the official Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal I sing out of most weekends at church, Hymn #530 only has three of the four stanzas. And the omitted second verse by Mr. Spafford is so absolutely poignant and pertinent to our study together on the topic of joy. Listen:

“Tho’ Satan should buffet, tho’ trials should come, Let this blest assurance control, That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate, And hath shed His own blood for my soul.”

Isn’t that an incredible perspective? And really, what else would a person have at a moment like that? The Spafford estate was obliterated, “helpless,” gone. Maggie, Tanetta, Annie, and Bessie were locked away in a watery tomb. But they were also safe in the arms of Jesus, the resurrected Redeemer. They were safely beyond the clutches of Satan; no longer could he buffet them with temptation and trials. And Mr. and Mrs. Spafford could go to the funeral, hear a sermon of hope about the promised day of reunion, and then sing the final stanza:

“And, Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight, The clouds be rolled back as a scroll; The trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend, ‘Even so’ — it is well with my soul.”