The Sailor Who Kept Forgetting

On March 21, 1748, a violent storm nearly sank the merchant vessel Greyhound in the North Atlantic. John Newton, a twenty-two-year-old sailor who had mocked faith for years, found himself lashed to the ship's wheel, pumping water for nine desperate hours. Somewhere in the howling wind, he cried out to God for mercy. When the seas calmed, he meant every word of his gratitude.

But within months, Newton returned to the slave trade. He captained three slaving voyages after that storm, praying each morning on a ship carrying human cargo below deck. He sought God in crisis, then drifted back into the very sins that had driven him to his knees. This cycle repeated for years — conviction followed by compromise, tears followed by forgetfulness.

Yet the Almighty did not abandon John Newton. Slowly, relentlessly, God's compassion outlasted Newton's inconsistency. By 1764, Newton had left the sea, entered the ministry, and begun the long, painful reckoning with his past that would eventually make him one of England's fiercest abolitionists and the author of Amazing Grace.

Psalm 78 tells us that Israel "remembered that God was their Rock" only when judgment struck, and that their hearts were not steadfast. Yet in the very next breath, the psalmist declares that God, "being compassionate, atoned for their iniquity and did not destroy them." Newton's life proves what the psalm proclaims: God's patience is always longer than our wandering.