Here’s a little insight to what I like to read, listen and see.

I have been brought up in church all my life, and music is in my blood. So I like to read stories behind the songs we sing.

I had read a biography before about John Newton and the songs he wrote, especially one that is a favorite. But listening to a preacher the other day, I hadn’t read or heard this story before and it blessed me.

In a picture frame on a wall, above a desk and chair, in a parlor room, in a small house in England is this verse: “And thou shalt remember that thou was a bondman in the land of Egypt, and I, the Lord thy God redeemed thee: therefore, I command thee this thing  today.” Deut. 15:15 KJV

Can you see John Newton, sitting there look up at the verse on the wall, thinking back to when he was lost, a slave trader in Africa and losing his mind and soul? Then, at some point, he starts thinking about when the Lord saved him.

Newton then began to write the words: “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost but now, am found. T’was blind, but now I see…”¹

What a wonderful Savior we serve.

God bless.

In Christ,

Stephen

1. “Amazing Grace”, by John Newton, 1779.