...the ragged, rugged road

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.

---John Newton, 1779?

Some of us may know the story behind Amazing Grace—the story of slave trader John Newton, who has a ‘come-to-Jesus’ moment and renounces the evil business of human trafficking. He becomes a fiery abolitionist, fighting against the evil upon which he built his fortune.

Turns out, the real story is a bit more convoluted (aren’t all stories?). After a reckless youth, and failures as a navy seaman and slave ship crew member, Newton ended up given as a slave himself to the African wife of a slave trader. On the trip home after being rescued, the ship was nearly lost, and Newton prayed to God and felt he had been spared, and saved.

And in a ‘Damascus road’, ‘I saw the light’ kind of salvation experience, there would have been a definite intermission before Act 2. But Newton continued trafficking Africans, and to invest in trafficking after he retired. The hymn Amazing Grace came along in 1772; his first public renunciation of slave-trading was in 1788.

And I’ve got to say, a lot of the time the road for me (maybe for you, too?) is a lot less Damascus road than it is the road Judee Sill wrote about:

            Roll on, roll on, roll on/Night birds are flyin’

            Come on, the light is gone/Hope’s slowly dyin’

            Tell me how you come ridin’through

            Gainin’ steady till this round is won

            On the ragged rugged road to kingdom come.

I once was lost, but now I’m found…