What can a breakpoint, a daily look at a never-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

What better way to start a new year than to remind ourselves about how God is at work in his world and in our lives.

That's what John Newton did back in 1773, and we've been singing his words ever since.

In a classic breakpoint commentary, Chuck Colson told the story of the beloved hymn Amazing

Grace, the unlikely man who wrote it, and the hymns connection to New Year's Day. Here's Chuck

Colson. At the end of December 1772, an Anglican priest in the poor parish of

Olney worked by candlelight on his New Year's Day sermon. He would preach on the text of First

Chronicles 17, verses 16 and 17. That passage was David's response to God after Nathan informed

him that his descendants would be enthroned forever as kings of Israel.

David, the once poor shepherd boy, the man who had repented of adultery and murder,

responded to the news by saying,

Who am I, O Lord God?

And what is my family that you have brought me thus far?

That pastor was John Newton, and those words struck a deep chord in his heart.

In those last days of 1772, Newton found himself running out of empty pages in his journal,

a bound book of 300 pages holding 16 years worth of entries. As he came to finish that journal and

start another, his mind was drawn to the pages of his past. The story of his life from his

days as an unregenerate slave traitor to becoming a child of God. Newton would have remembered

when his rebellious spirit got him thrown off numerous ships, publicly flogged and ousted from his

majesty's navy. He would have remembered the shipwrecks and the mutinies and then the transformation

of his heart by the power of the gospel.

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