The challenges you have overcome. The gratefulness of what you have all around you. Those are the times that I appreciate those old hymns. Like “It is Well” written in 1871 by Horatio Spafford.

The late Martin Marty, a famed Christian historian, once wrote: “If you complain that it’s a bit bumpy and hard to sing, or that it’s ‘one of those old hymns’ and not catchy like the ...