grace

I love grace...

I'm blown away by God's amazing grace toward me-- and I gladly accept it.

I try to extend grace to others-- through the power of Christ living in and through me.

We visited Westport Road Baptist this weekend and I heard the first lesson in a series on the song "Amazing Grace" by David Jeremiah in my in-laws Sunday School class. Jeremiah was fantastic. (It looks like this sermon series became a book.)

He opened with a fantastic story I vaguely remember-- about a lady in NY getting her face crushed in a car accident by a thrown, frozen turkey. Her response-- as recorded in Julia Mead's NYT article-- to that crime and injustice was remarkable.

Jeremiah covered the melody, the man (briefly), and the message. The most interesting value-added came from his discussion of the history of the song:

-John Newton wrote it in late 1772, as was typical for him, in tandem with his sermon for that week (on I Chron 17:16-17)-- delivered on January 1, 1733.

-The original title of AG was "Faith's Review and Expectation".

-The lyrics were combined with at least 20 different tunes before settling on "New Britain" in 1829.

-The last verse was added years later by Edwin Othello Excell-- from Uncle Tom's Cabin.

-The song was reasonably popular over the years, but exploded in popularity with its release by Judy Collins in 1970. The recording was #1 in the US and the UK in 1971. Since then, Jeremiah noted, there have been 100s of renditions of it-- which he asserted was, by far, the most of any other song.