Chronicles
Now that the nation has returned from exile, the Chronicler (assumed author of Chronicles) writes the history as a means of reminding the people of Judah where they came from, why the exile and sort of what now. He leaves the door open to the hope of a coming Messiah.
Perspectives
Background
Contemplate our heritage
Adam - Fallen Humanity
Abraham - covenant
Jacob and his sons - The tribal divisions
David - the promised King and the succession of kings
Contemplate our relationship to God
Contemplate our future
Closing Thoughts
AMAZING GRACE
March 21, 1748
Born in London in 1725, John Newton, a sea captain’s son, lost his mother when he was six. However, before she died she prayed that he would become a minister. Newton went to sea with his father at age eleven. After an unsuccessful stint in the Royal Navy, he went to work for a slave trader.
In March 1848, Newton was in a violent storm that changed him forever. He went to bed that night and was awakened by the storm. Within a few minutes the ship was a virtual wreck, filling with water. Working frantically, the crew finally was able to plug the leaks. Exhausted, Newton heard himself say to the captain, “If this will not do, the Lord have mercy upon us.” Newton was instantly taken aback by his own words that reflected the first time he had desired God’s mercy in years. Then the thought went through his mind, What mercy can there be for me?
As the storm continued the next day, March 21, 1748, Newton sadly concluded that there had never been a sinner as wicked as he and that his sins were too great and too many to be forgiven. His journal records the deliverance from that storm and his spiritual deliverance as well: “[This] is a day much to be remembered by me, and I have never suffered it to pass wholly unnoticed since the year 1748. On that day, the Lord sent from on high and delivered me out of the deep waters.…”
Later he wrote: “I stood in need of an Almighty Saviour, and such a one I found described in the New Testament.… I was no longer an infidel; I heartily renounced my former profaneness, and I had taken up some right notions; was seriously disposed, and sincerely touched with a sense of the undeserved mercy I had received, in being brought safe through so many dangers.”
Although he continued sailing and working in the slave trade for a time, Newton studied the Bible, prayed, read Christian books, and finally left the sea behind. In 1764, at age thirty-nine, John Newton began a new life as a minister in the Church of England, later writing his autobiographical hymn, “Amazing Grace.”
Throughout his life, he stopped to thank God on his “anniversary.” The last entry in his journal was written on March 21, 1805, an anniversary of his deliverance. He wrote simply, “Not well able to write; but I endeavor to observe the return of this day with humiliation, prayer, and praise.”