Who is amazing grace

While I was listening I was behind the wheel, with the white sunlight pouring down on my forearms. We were off the highway, in the Badlands, probably looking for a place to have lunch, or a bathroom. Passing more slowly among the buttes. That was the visible world; but something had changed my way of seeing it. It may be that after two years of living in a mountainside apartment—on a clear day, which was rare, you could see over the coastal mountains all the way to the Chinese border—I was used to seeing presence-and-absence, the vertiginous experience all expatriates have of alternating homesickness and euphoric happiness, longing and belonging.

I had spent the past year reading Madhyamaka philosophy, the Buddhist school that most radically critiques any concept of inherent existence by undermining concepts themselves, and I was ready—in an unmistakably privileged, consequence-free way—to experience not-understanding.

I was performing what Brecht calls formal realism which is actually unrealism. This is another uncomfortable truth about actual moments of realization: they tend to arrive only when a person is ready for them. They require preparation, without necessarily knowing what the preparation is for. Americans, who often fetishize ignorance and treat it as synonymous with innocence, have trouble with this idea: it works against the idea of the wretched, debased subject, who receives grace without doing anything to deserve or even imagine it in advance.

A Zen master once stayed in an interview with his student until late at night, and then lit a candle so the student could walk back to his room. As the student stepped over the threshold, the master called to him; the student turned around, and the master blew out the candle.

That was his enlightenment. Used with the permission of the publisher, Graywolf Press. Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature. Via Graywolf Press. By Jess Row. Close to the Lithub Daily Thank you for subscribing! Newton was eventually ordained and began to lead his own church.

God changed him from a man who was an advocate for the slave trade to a man actively working towards abolishing it. Newton's literary work against the slave trade encouraged abolitionist William Wilberforce to continue his legal fight against slavery in England. In later years, Newton began to lose his memory. This song touched many people at various stages of their spiritual walks. Newton experienced the darkness and hopelessness of his sin and the consequence of following his own corrupt ways.

He focused on fulfilling what he wanted to do in his life instead of looking to the direction of God. As humans we are lost, blind in sin, and need saving. Continuing onto the second stanza, Newton writes that it was grace that taught his heart to fear the punishment of his sin and it was also grace that those fears were relieved.

This precious grace appeared when he was standing in that vicious storm, the moment he first believed. Through the trials and storms of life, it is grace that brings us through life, and it is grace that will lead us to heaven.

God has promised goodness and provides his Word in which we can rest our hope. Written almost two and a half centuries ago in , the words for the beloved song were borne from the heart, mind and experiences of the Englishman John Newton. Knowing the story of John Newton's life as a slave trader and the journey he went through before writing the hymn will help to understand the depth of his words and his gratefulness for God's truly amazing grace.

Having lived through a rather unfortunate and troubled childhood his mother passed away when he was just six years old , Newton spent years fighting against authority, going so far as trying to desert the Royal Navy in his twenties. Later, abandoned by his crew in West Africa, he was forced to be a servant to a slave trader but was eventually rescued. On the return voyage to England, a violent storm hit and almost sank the ship, prompting Newton to begin his spiritual conversion as he cried out to God to save them from the storm.

Upon his return, however, Newton became a slave ship master, a profession in which he served for several years. Bringing slaves from Africa to England over multiple trips, he admitted to sometimes treating the slaves abhorrently. In , after becoming violently ill on a sea voyage, Newton abandoned his life as a slave trader, the slave trade, and seafaring, altogether, wholeheartedly devoting his life to God's service.

In later years, Newton fought alongside William Wilberforce, leader of the parliamentary campaign to abolish the African slave trade. He described the horrors of the slave trade in a tract he wrote supporting the campaign and lived to see the British passage of the Slave Trade Act I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind but now I see.

Through many dangers, toils, and snares I have already come. Close to death at various times and blind to reality at others, Newton would most assuredly not have written "Amazing Grace" if not for his tumultuous past. And many of us would then be without these lovely words that so aptly describe our own relationship with Christ and our reliance on God's grace in our lives:. Those who have read Harriet Beecher Stowe's classic African American novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin , may remember that Tom sings three verses of "Amazing Grace," including one verse not written by Newton, which is now traditionally sung as the final verse:.

When we've been there ten thousand years, Bright shining as the sun, We've no less days to sing God's praise, Than when we first begun.