Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me....
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now, I see.
That saved a wretch like me....
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now, I see.
From a Snopes article:
Someone told me that that the words to "Amazing Grace" were written by the captain of a slave ship in the 1880s. He was bringing a large supply of slaves, to the US, when he suddenly became inexplicably wracked with guilt over this chosen profession, and ordered that the ship be turned back to Africa, and all the slaves freed. He then wrote the words to "Amazing Grace" to explain the epiphany which caused him to abandon his trade.
This is the version of John Newton's story I had always heard. But I found the true story to be even more inspiring:I went through all sorts of narrow escapes with death only a hair breath away on a number of occasions. One time I opened some crates of rum and got everybody on the crew drunk. The skipper, incensed with my actions, beat me, threw me down below, and I lived on stale bread and sour vegetables for an unendurable amount of time. He brought me above to beat me again, and I fell overboard. Because I couldn't swim, he harpooned me to get me back on the ship. And I lived with the scar in my side, big enough for me to put my fist into, until the day of my death.
On board, I was inflamed with fever. I was enraged with the humiliation. A storm broke out, and I wound up again in the hold of the ship, down among the pumps. To keep the ship afloat, I worked alone as a servant of the slaves. There, bruised and confused, bleeding, diseased, I was the epitome of the degenerate man.
I remember the words of my mother. I cried out to God, the only way I knew, calling upon His grace and mercy to deliver me, and upon His Son to save me. The only glimmer of light I would find was in a crack in the ship in the floor above me, and I looked up to it and screamed for help.
..."Newton's storm-driven adoption of Christianity didn't change him all that much; he continued to make his living from the slave trade for many years afterwards and only left the trade when his wife insisted upon their living a settled life in England. (Indeed, less than a year after his storm-driven conversion, Newton was back in Africa, brokering the purchase of newly-captured blacks and taking yet another "African wife" while there. He was hardly the poster boy for the truly penitent, at least at that point in his life.)
Newton did eventually grow into his conversion, so that by the end of his days he actually was the godly man one would expect to have penned 'Amazing Grace.'
But it was a slow process effected over the passage of decades, not something that happened with a clap of thunder and a flash of lightning. In Newton's case, the "amazing grace" he wrote of might well have referred to God's unending patience with him...."
The rest of this article is here: Urban Legends Reference Pages: Amazing Grace
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God's unending patience is the story of my life and also what the bible is all about. Many of us have dramatic conversion stories - how wonderful it would be if the work of grace was finished all at once. But for me, and for John Newton - after that dramatic moment of conversion it's been a slow process effected over the passage of decades.
One of my favorite lapel buttons said something like "please be patient with me, I'm not finished yet". As believers i think sometimes that's the kindest thing we can do for one another, just be patient and realize we are all a work in progress.
When we've been here ten thousand years...
bright shining as the sun.
We've no less days to sing God's praise...
then when we've first begun.
bright shining as the sun.
We've no less days to sing God's praise...
then when we've first begun.
