The calendar read today’s date, March 10. The year, 1748.
A captain out at sea has been spending the late hours reading Thomas a Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ. He can’t get that line out of his head: “uncertain continuance of life.” Would his life end soon?
On that March night he is jolted awake by a violent storm lashing his ship. Terrified, the shaken man pleads with God for his life.
God hears. And the man who arrives safely to port is a repentant, coverted man. For the rest of his life, the ship’s captain would observe the anniversary of March 10, 1748 as the day of his conversion, “On that day the Lord sent from on high and delivered me out of deep waters.”
Perhaps you know these famous words the captian penned,
“Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come;
’tis grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”
It is March the 10th. And I join John Newton in remembering God’s Amazing Grace that saved a wretch like me.
