Edith Sitwell said of William Blake, the great painter and poet, “Of course he was cracked. That’s where the light shone through.”
I like that explanation! All of us are cracked somewhere, or we are not what we are cracked up to be. None of us are perfect and will never be. It is the knowledge of our imperfection, the willingness to know that we are flawed, that becomes our asset. When we recognize that, we are in the position to receive the power to be what we are called to be.
A favorite hymn of mine and many people is “Amazing Grace.” The story of its author, John Newton, is a thrilling one. Newton was the captain of a slave ship. The flourishing slave trade was a great shame of Western civilization for over a hundred years. For Newton, however, it was just a job. It was all he had ever known. Following in his father’s footsteps, he went to sea when he was eleven years old.
As an adult, something began to stir inside him. The inhumanity inflicted on human beings by the slave industry began to burn in his conscience, and he knew it wasn’t right. It offended him and created a raging restlessness in his conscience.
Then it happened. One day, Newton was in Liverpool, England, and he went to a little Methodist church and was converted. The evidence of his conversion was that he became an abolitionist in a time and country in which abolition was an unpopular cause. He joined others in the battle against slavery, what John Wesley called the “vilest sin under the sun.” Newton wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace” to tell the story of his transformation and to express the centrality of the Christian’s faith.
It is no wonder that this is a favorite hymn. It gathers up one of the most profound facets of the gospel —the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
was blind, but now I see.
That gospel of grace defines and shapes the Church as a home of grace.