Amazing grace

We sang Amazing Grace in church. Before the song was sung the pastor talked about why John Newton wrote the song. Newton was a slave trader who encountered a storm. There was fear that he would lose his life so he prayed out to God for rescue.

The storm stopped. John Newton was still alive and in gratitude he pledged his life to serve God. It truly is an inspiring story about the power of God and the gratitude of man. His occuation didn't change for a while, but it was said that he treated the slaves he was transporting "more humanly."

While this is an inspiring story, there is another side as well. What of the slaves in the hold of his ship praying out to God to be delivered from their nightmare? There are no stories of famous hymns written when God delivered the slave from his or her storm. The way I look at it, reading about the conditions of human trafficking, and watching the movie “Amistad”, it becomes apparent that the slaves’ fears and misery far exceeded the storm that Newton endured. Many of them died at sea thinking that God had forgotten them.

I think the truth is that our existence is far more mysterious than we know. The inhumanity of mankind to itself is mind-boggling. And whether God shows up in a storm, or appears a to be a million miles away, His word says He is with us at all times. The strange reality of suffering is that God is with us whether we are delivered from a storm, or dying in the hold of a ship. And while we can be pleased to see the redemption of one man from the calming of a storm, many times the greater peace of God's presence may come when there is no delivery. We may see in more powerful ways, God's true deliverance...from ourselves.