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Amazing Grace is more than just a song. It is someone’s salvation. As you’re about to find out, it’s a place, too

When it comes to arrivals in Ireland, however, few can match that of John Newton.

Stormy Seas

“At 23, John Newton was a foul-mouthed sailor working in the slave trade. Newton had rejected Christianity and delighted in mocking and criticising people of faith.“

In fact, during his passage back to England from Africa in 1748, Newton was so unpopular with “his crew that the captain blamed him for the violent storm which so nearly claimed their lives”.

And while that storm off Donegal’s coast didn’t take John’s life, it did change it.

Any port in a storm

During the storm that almost took his and his fellow passengers lives, Newton felt utter and complete fear and turned to God for mercy. That mercy came in the shape of Lough Swilly, a mirror of a lake between Inishowen and Fanad peninsulas in County Donegal. It was in Inishowen that the boat was repaired and the crew housed.

Calm after the storm

“I often feel that same sense of peace and “refuge” when I walk along the banks of the lough and gaze out across the water or listen to the waves gently lapping at the shore,” Ruth tells us. “No matter how busy I’ve been, a few moments by Lough Swilly are like taking a deep breath!” But Newton and crew wouldn’t have only been pleased with the surroundings. The care and attention they received at the hands of the locals was something unique. In the intervening years that warmth has not dimmed.

Welcome to Inishowen
Whether it was Lough Swilly, Inishowen or his salvation from the storm, Newton was a new man. From this point on he renounced his work in the slave trade, became a friend and political ally of the abolitionist William Wilberforce and of course, penned Amazing Grace.

So the next time you sing Amazing Grace, spare a thought for John Newton and remember that neither he, nor the song, would be here without the calm of Lough Swilly and the Inishowen Peninsula.

Now that’s a sweet sound.

And whoever sees Me sees the One who sent Me. I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in Me should remain in darkness. 

– The revelation of God becomes the light of the soul and the light of the world. The evangelist had said, in his prologue, “In him was life,” and the Life (the eternal Logos of life) was “the Light of men.” All true understanding, all purifying, gracious influence shed on human affairs, nature, or destiny, are the issue and result of the Divine Life which, under every dispensation, has wrought in humanity. Above all, “the Light that lighteth every man,” namely, that which has always and which ever will radiate from the life conferred on our humanity by the Logos, the life of God in mind and conscience, “came into the world” – came, that is, in a new and more effective form, came in the radiance of a perfect human life. The evangelist has sustained his teaching by quoting the solemn words of Jesus in John 3:19; John 8:12; also John 9:5, where a special narrative of miraculous love typified both the need in which the human family, the sacred Israel, and even his own disciples, stood of light, and of the light which he could pour upon the sightless eyeballs. And now the connection of this passage is – You could not behold me if light did not stream forth from me. I have come, and am come (ἐλήλυθα, this has been and is my abiding purpose; cf. John 5:43; John 7:28) a Light into the world, and my object has been and is that whosoever believeth on me – whoso-ever sees by the inward eye that which I really am, sees how my life stands related to the Father, whosoever assents to the new revelation thus given, even over and above the “inward light” of the Logos – should not abide in the darkness which enwraps all souls; for, as said in the prologue, “the Light” (the archetypal Light) shineth upon the darkness of human nature, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.” It should be especially noticed that in 2 Corinthians 4:6 St. Paul had grasped and uttered the fullness of this thought.