“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!”

The hymn is heard around the world; bagpipers are heard even in the Highlands pouring out the haunting melody.  But how many know that the words for this well-known song came from the heart-depths of a formerly rough and hardened slave trader?  His ship would sit for months in the harbors of African trading centers until enough captives were brought to him by local brokers in humanity to make up a trans-Atlantic shipload of suffering human cargo (Journal of a Slave Trader, by John Newton.)

It was a raging storm and Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ that led him to a genuine conversion to Christ, even to a call to become a pastor.  “His word my hope secure.”  “How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed.”

The words were penned and published in a collection of hymns by John Newton and William Cowper, called Olney Hymns, in 1779.  The melody used in England was a familiar  tune, but when the words made their way to America, miraculously they were somehow paired with a tune familiar to slaves!  And that is the version we sing today. From the pen of a former slave trader in England, to the tune sung by slaves on the plantations in America, to the voices of the whole world!  Is that GRACE!?

John Newton was a great inspiration and spiritual mentor to William Wilberforce, who was the leader of many abolitionists working to see the end of the slave trade in England.  Just after Wilberforce died, a law passed in Parliament to abolish the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in England.

Most of us know “grace” as a sweet word that conjures up the famous hymn in our heads. But how many of us know the “amazing” aspects of “grace”?  The grace John Newton found and wrote of was the grace—the free gift—to wipe away, once and for all, his sins, even the horrendous sin of trafficking in human souls.  He found  grace that had the power to bring complete transformation, total change!

We are told by scripture to “grow in grace” (II Peter 3:18).  How do we grow (or get more) grace?  By having enough pain and difficulty in life to desperately need it!  By crying out for it!  And then there is that wonderful promise: “My grace is enough for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness”  (II Cor. 12:9).  How big is enough?  Is there a mountain of pain bigger than “enough”?

“Grace” not only saves us, but it gives us the power to live a righteous life (Titus 2: 11-12).

However, we are warned not to “fail to obtain the grace of God.” Life will bring offenses and we are offered a choice:  bitterness or grace.  When the hurt looks too big to forgive, His grace is enough!

“Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.  See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble and by it many become defiled.”
Hebrews 12: 15