Here is some "Amazing Grace" for your Sunday morning

[hellbound-liberal]

Even if you don't consider yourself a Christian, I encourage you to follow this link to hear the history and a very moving rendition of this most spiritual song. You won't ever hear the song the same again. It brought me to tears.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMF_24cQqT0

[lost-in-nj]

1. There was just a movie

in the theaters about how and why this song was written
I will have to find the name of it...


on edit: I just watched this
:cry:
Thsnk you, it was beautiful


lost

[av8rdave]

2. If you ever get a chance to sail on Windjammer

http://www.windjammer.com

They play it when they raise the sails. Always a moving moment.

[Dirty Hippie]

3. Excellent - Thank you n/t

[hfojvt]

4. amazing, but kinda sad

Did Newton give up the slave trade after the grace found him?

[hellbound-liberal]

5. He apparently continued as a slave ship captain after his "conversion" during a storm at sea

Here's what I found out:

“Newton was born in London July 24, 1725, the son of a commander of a merchant ship which sailed the Mediterranean. When John was eleven, he went to sea with his father and made six voyages with him before the elder Newton retired. In 1744 John was impressed into service on a man-of-war, the H. M. S. Harwich. Finding conditions on board intolerable, he deserted but was soon recaptured and publicly flogged and demoted from midshipman to common seaman.Finally at his own request he was exchanged into service on a slave ship, which took him to the coast of Sierra Leone. He then became the servant of a slave trader and was brutally abused. Early in 1748 he was rescued by a sea captain who had known John's father. John Newton ultimately became captain of his own ship, one which plied the slave trade.

Although he had had some early religious instruction from his mother, who had died when he was a child, he had long since given up any religious convictions. However, on a homeward voyage, while he was attempting to steer the ship through a violent storm, he experienced what he was to refer to later as his "great deliverance." He recorded in his journal that when all seemed lost and the ship would surely sink, he exclaimed, "Lord, have mercy upon us." Later in his cabin he reflected on what he had said and began to believe that God had addressed him through the storm and that grace had begun to work for him.

For the rest of his life he observed the anniversary of May 10, 1748 as the day of his conversion, a day of humiliation in which he subjected his will to a higher power. "Thro' many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; 'tis grace has bro't me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home." He continued in the slave trade for a time after his conversion; however, he saw to it that the slaves under his care were treated humanely.”
http://www.texasfasola.org/biographies/johnnewton.html