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…
