Wednesday, January 3, 2024

God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.Ephesians 2:8-9

"Amazing Grace" was written by John Newton in 1772. According to the Library of Congress, the words describe the joy and peace of a soul uplifted from despair to salvation through the gift of grace. Newton's lyrics are also autobiographical––a commentary on how he was spared from both physical and spiritual ruin. “It relates the happy ending of the tale of a defiant man who manages again and again to escape danger, disease, abuse, and death, only to revert to "struggles between sin and conscience." His father, a merchant ship captain, was often away on sea voyages that typically lasted two to three years. During one of these absences, Newton's mother died of tuberculosis, leaving him in the temporary care of her friends. Repeatedly, he was brought face-to-face with the notion that he had been miraculously spared. He was  thrown from a horse, narrowly missing impalement on a row of sharp stakes. Once he arrived too late to board a warship that he watched overturn and drown all its passengers. On a hunting expedition in Africa on a dark night, he and his companions got lost in a swamp. Just when they had resigned themselves to death, the moon appeared and they were able to return to safety. These type experiences were commonplace for Newton. Regardless of the many times he was rescued, he relapsed into his old habits, continuing to defy his religious destiny and attempting to dissuade others from their beliefs. He was a slaver, taking a ship full of slaves across the Atlantic to Charleston, South Carolina. After conversion, he worked to ensure that every member of his crew treated their human cargo with gentleness and concern. Forty years later, he finally openly challenged the trafficking of slaves. He was later called to the ministry and began to speak out against slavery.

While there is no direct link between "Amazing Grace" and the abolition of slavery in Britain, Newton was moved to speak out against something from which he had once profited. Newton wrote, "I hope it will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me…that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders." So it seems fitting that his hymn has become for so many an anthem against all forms of social injustice.

MEDITATION: 

Amazing grace! How sweet the soundThat saved a wretch like me!I once was lost, but now am found;Was blind, but now I see.’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,And grace my fears relieved;How precious did that grace appearThe hour I first believed.Through many dangers, toils, and snares,I have already come;’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,And grace will lead me home…When we’ve been there ten thousand years,Bright shining as the sun,We’ve no less days to sing God’s praiseThan when we’d first begun.

In the name of Jesus, I praise you. AMEN

https://loc.gov/item/ihas.200149085/