By most counts, “Amazing Grace” is the best-known hymn in America. It rightly uses the adjective “amazing” because grace refers to God giving us something good that we did not earn and were not entitled to. This sort of grace is the generosity and goodness in God’s character that causes him to extend his forgiveness and love to us when we reach out to him in faith. To say it another way, grace is the hand of God reaching down to us to grasp the hand of faith with which we reach up to him.
Notice, however, that while both of these definitions focus on God’s loving action toward us, they also include some action on our part - the reach of our faith.
Grace like that is amazing because it brings salvation and new life to the one who receives it, or as the hymn says, “Amazing grace ... that saved a wretch like me!” You may know that the hymn was written by John Newton in the 1700s. He was the former captain of a slave ship who after conversion gave up that way of life and entered the ministry. The grace of God enabled him to do an amazing turnaround in the way he was living.
But that grace - let’s call it saving grace - is not the only form God’s grace takes.
Let me give you an example. Minerva Carca?o supervises some church work in Portland, Oregon. A couple of years ago, Carca?o was riding the city’s metro train to a church event. At the second stop on her route, a woman and young man boarded, and Carca?o slid over to make room for them. The woman sat down next to her. The pair, a mother and son, appeared to be Hispanic, so Carca?o, also Hispanic, inquired if they spoke
