IF SOMETHING is free, it must be useless and old, right?

Not in the case of GRACE - God's free gift of undeserved kindness to us.

There's a song about this amazing "freebie". It's been performed by artists from Ray Charles to Bono. It's been played on bagpipes and the saxophone. It's been sung all over the world, and an instrumental version remains the best-selling instrumental single of all time in Britain. It is, of course, Amazing Grace.

Its writer, John Newton, was a reformed slave-trader: "Only God's amazing grace could and would take a rude, profane, slave-trading sailor and transform him into a child of God." He wrote Amazing Grace after becoming a Christian in 1748 and abandoning the slave trade.

The Bible says: "All of us have sinned and fallen short of God's glory" (Romans 3:23).

But this is not a reason to despair. The Bible goes straight on to say: "But God treats us much better than we deserve, and because of Christ Jesus, He freely accepts us and sets us free from our sins" (Romans 3:24).

250 years after Amazing Grace was written grace is still freely available to anyone who is willing to admit their true state before God.

Jesus is the way back to God if we trust in Him. So ditch your pride, cry out to Him. Then you'll be able to sing sincerely:

"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me."

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