Another blog about seeing.
I open my iPad and the headline lures me in
but it disappears before I can click and is instantly replaced by other filtered stories.
Curiosity peaked, I Google,
Amazing Grace in the White House,
and immediately two articles appear.
Fox News chooses the headline,
“GOP congressman, 80 pastors sing
‘Amazing Grace’ in Capitol Rotunda”.
Fox News
The Charisma News article is headlined,
“Amazing Grace Breaks Out in
Powerful White House Moment!”.
I wonder how the group made the choice to sing,
Amazing Grace, was it a spontaneous moment,
or planned ahead?
I consider the phrase in the headline,
Powerful White House Moment, how does that fit together with the actual words being sung?
Why do football game crowds in the USA sing this hymn?
What role did Amazing Grace play in the civil rights movement?
And then I ask,
Who wrote this hymn, what is the backstory?
Charisma News
The author is John Newton.
He was born near London in 1725. At an early age he went to sea and eventually captained several slave ships, sailing between Africa and Britain.
Diagram of British slave ship
He wrote wrote Amazing Grace in 1772
The words came from the deepest place in John Newton’s heart.
He saw his past, he recognized his depravity, his cruelty and deeply repented he embraced God’s mercy and forgiveness.
Eventually he left the lucrative trade of trafficking human beings and he became a pastor,
a mentor to William Wilberforce, and “he lived to see the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which outlawed the British slave trade”. (AI Overview)
Generations earlier a man approaches the gates of Damascus breathing out murderous threats.
His resume is impeccable, he has been commissioned by religious leaders to pursue and persecute those deemed to be “subversive, the enemy”.
…suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him,
Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?
Blinded by the terrible light, he is led by the hand
into the city, where something like scales fell from his eyes…
Acts 9
Conversion of Saul, Caravaggio, 1601