Finding Your Amazing Grace
Finding Your Amazing Grace
by Perry C. Douglas
by Perry C. Douglas
April 21, 2020
As the famous saying goes: in the midst of crisis, there is opportunity. In the midst of the 2020 COVID-19 crisis, many are faced with their own individual challenges and opportunities. Everyone, in one way or the other, will have to change something in their lives, in order to thrive in the new world. Some will have to face greater challenges than others; nevertheless, transcending change is in our midst, and such transformation may require a total reinvention of self, for some. Undoubtedly, however, it will also require finding untapped strength, to do so.
The human condition has always dealt with adversity through adaptation, driven by inspiration. Appropriately, the song “Amazing Grace,” one of the most iconic songs in the world, played over 10 million times a year, is the story about just that...inspired change, doing better! Yet many may not know the story behind this amazing song. It was written over 300 years ago by English poet and clergyman, John Newton; who was also a former slave trader.
As a clergyman, however, Newton was looking for a hymn to go along with his New Year's Day service. He was looking for a simple song, one that simple people could enjoy. Heartfelt words that they would inspire. Newton had already selected the scripture for his sermon that morning—first Chronicles, seventeen...where King David asks himself with wonder, “who am I... that thou hast brought me here.” Newton then said to his congregation that Friday morning... 1st of January 1773... “the Lord gives us many blessings, but unless we are grateful for these, we lose much of the comfort from them.” So... Newton uttered... “never mind David. What about you and me, where were you when the Lord found you?” For himself, Newton answered, “I was a wretch.”
Hence, the first words of the song would be “Amazing Grace,” that sounded right to him, yes, it did indeed; he then wrote, “how sweet the sound.” While writing he began to reflect on his former life and the fact that he was once a slave ship captain, trafficking in human cargo. During that time, Newton was once captured by a rivalship and forced to work as a “slave” himself for a very short while, on a small island of the coast of Sierra Leone.
After his release, Newton went directly to a life so depraved that even his shipmates found it shocking. What a wretched life I have lead, he said. He then began to ask the Lord for grace and forgiveness... to “save a wretch like me.” He realized how far he had moved away from God, and the life God indented for him in his former life... “I once was lost, but now am found.” Newton then reflected more intensely, reflecting on his life of sin—as a slave trader, and his own brief enslavement experience... “T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear.” Newton continued to pray and reflect, “And Grace, my fears relieved How precious did that grace appear The hour I first believed.”
For the rest of his life, Newton would mark every March 21st as a day of humiliation, prayer, and praise for his great deliverance from a life of sin, which he’d been living. Newton’s conversion set him on a long winding path, that would take him to a new life; not in one great leap, but step by single step! A sinner, who sought Grace from God, and God gave it, gracefully. It was then Newton’s life began to become completely transformed. Again, not all at once, the transformation was a long process, and “if I had any light then, it would be at the first faint streak of dawn,” Newton said.
Pastor John Newton dipped his quill once again—how could he sum up this long journey? He began to lament: “Through many dangers, toils and snares. I have already come.” He wanted to sum up that this was not a single event, but something that is with him every day: “T'was grace that brought me safe thus far And grace will lead me home.” The once slave ship captain did not only go onto renounce slavery but worked actively to abolish it. Nineteen years before his death, Newton's “Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade” was published. His personal experiences and eyewitness accounts of the appalling conditions upon slave ships, the brutality and atrocities of slavery. Provided British abolitionists and parliamentarians like William Wilberforce; with the evidence, they needed to educate a misinformed public. Leading to the beginning of the end for the British Transatlantic slave trade.
As Newton approached death...he told his close friend William Jay, his now-famous declaration, “my memory is near gone but I remember two things: that I am a great sinner and that Christ is a Great saviour.”
Newton died in 1807 at the age of 82, nine months after witnessing the answer to many prayers—the successful passage for “An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.”
In the years following his death, Newton's song would have an amazing journey. By now, in its original form, the hymn was all but forgotten in England. However, as Grace would have it, nearly a half-century after Newton wrote the song Amazing Grace, it began to appear in the American south, sung to a new melody. This new music...new tune, which today is so much a part of the hymn, that one could not even imagine it any other way. Newton’s simple words had enormous new power in life, it became a quantum source of power that brought some comfort to the indignity of slavery. Through brutality and subjugation, Amazing Grace, ironically written by a former slave trader...now became the salvation, and hope for slaves themselves.
Amazing Grace was sung often on civil rights marches, it was sung when Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. Sung with rejoicing in South Africa when Nelson Mandela was released from prison. Sung throughout the south and the Caribbean, when-ever its comfort is required. The story of Amazing Grace reminds us all, that the same Grace that transformed the life of a former slave ship captain, three centuries ago, can still change lives today. By the Grace of God! Therefore, the true story of Amazing Grace is a story that continues, and as long as there are people in need of hope and deliverance—it will have no end!
Perry C. Douglas,
Entrepreneur, Innovator & Believer
in Technology as an agent of Social Change
Perry, what a powerful article. It is inspirational and powerful in that it demonstrates the Almighty power of God to effect change in everyone of us. The catalyst, Covid19 is an opportunity to PAUSE, reflect, restart. Thanks for sharing
ReplyDelete