Many of us have been given something we don’t deserve. Maybe you can remember a gracious gift or deed from someone that caught you off guard. You didn’t do anything to earn this, someone simply felt led to give freely to you with no strings attached. The life of John Newton beautifully portrays this concept. He was the son of a believing mother though she died when he was only eleven. He was sent to be with his father to live at sea among the morality of sailors. Not too many years later he was forced into naval service, but his poor behavior landed him chained to the deck of a slave ship bound for Guinea. His father came to his rescue, demanding that he be returned to England and God orchestrated a meeting with him on the way home. The crew encountered a terrible storm that so scared Newton, he found the nearest church and gave himself to God. Following his conversion he continued to struggle, specifically with his job as first mate on the slave ship Brownlow. At the time, the African slave trade was as horrific as it was prosperous. When a seizure of the Brownlow opened the door for his resignation, he finally put this sin behind him. Late in life he mentored a young William Wilberforce, the leading man responsible for seeing the Slave Trade Act passed, abolishing enslavement on British ships. Newton’s most memorable accomplishment though was penning Hymn XLI, “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me…”