This is my all-time favourite hymn and I know it is loved by many. It is hard to comprehend how these words, penned by John Newton one frosty December day in an attic room of an English vicarage in Olney in the late 18th century, still have life-changing impact. In the 21st century these words still encourage, challenge, comfort and even stop people in their tracks. I heard a Scottish piper playing these notes only 2 weeks ago in Edinburgh when I was with my sister and was moved to tears of gratitude.
“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.”
What wonderful news. I remember singing these words 19 years ago, my eyes and heart still closed to the truth of God’s great love for me, but God is in the wretch-saving business… so I qualified! John Newton qualified too: once a slave trader, alcoholic and violent man his heart was changed by the power of God’s spirit during a violent storm at sea. Newton had previously been a slave himself, starved and brutally abused at the hands of his captain’s African mistress in Sierra Leone - later in life if he ever felt tempted to feel proud of his natural abilities or his moral calibre he would think back to the time when he was a ‘wretch’, lower than slaves. No one is too bad for God... and no one is too good either!
These days I still mess up, we all do, we make wrong choices, say wrong things, but encouragingly ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ is a realistic picture of the Christian life. Virtually every time the pilgrim faces a choice, he makes the wrong one and makes bad detours all along the road. I am thankful that in Scotland we did not make too many bad detours, more down to Amazing Grace than our Amazing Navigation!
The wonderful message of grace is that although we fall down, God picks us up and dusts us off. Again, and again, and again…..
If you can find time listen, reflect and give thanks as the piper plays Amazing Grace [YouTube - 3 mins].
Dawn Milward
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