Though in young manhood, Newton did his level best to "sin away" every last vestige of these early impressions, he never fully succeeded.  "They returned again and again," he tells us, "and it was very long before I could wholly shake them off; and when the Lord at length opened my eyes, I found a great benefit from the recollection of them."²  In other words, Mrs. Newton's chickens eventually came home to roost. 

The well-worn and oft-quoted words of Proverbs 22:6 immediately come to mind:  "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it."  It is true, of course, that many godly parents have suffered greatly because of their wayward sons' and daughters' ill choices.  As wise as this saying may be, it doesn't necessarily mean it's an unqualified promise or absolute guarantee.  But neither should the life-giving principle it conveys be too easily dismissed.  It does, after all, make a very real difference how a child is raised.  Moses acknowledged this in his instructions to the people of Israel: 

"And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up."  Deuteronomy 6:6-7

It needs to be said that, allowing for anomalies and departures from the rule, this kind of investment generally yields a rich dividend, a dividend that can manifest itself in surprising ways.  Consider the case of young Samuel, whose course in life was fixed when his mother Hannah "lent him to the Lord" (1 Samuel 1:28); or Timothy, whose "genuine faith … dwelt first in [his] grandmother Lois and [his] mother Eunice" (2 Timothy 1:5).  We know that God can use anyone or anything to draw hearts to Himself and prepare a pathway for His people.  And yet there is no substitute for the tender affections of a godly mother.  Newton himself felt this keenly:  "[My father] was a man of remarkable good sense, and great knowledge of the world; he took great care of my morals, but could not supply my mother's part."³

"In the Torah," observes Chaya Saskonin, a member of Brooklyn's Lubavitch Jewish Community, "women are called akeret ha-bayit, the foundation of the home.  That doesn't mean washing dishes.  It means educating our children in everything we think about life.  That's the nature of what a mother is."⁴

And so it is.  It's also the nature of the God who made mothers; the God who weaves each one of us together in the womb (Psalm 139:13) and shelters us under His wings like a brooding hen (Psalm 17:8; Matthew 23:37).  This is the same God who, in His infinite wisdom and mercy, both gives and takes away: the God who granted John Newton an excellent parent for his early spiritual upbringing, only to remove her from his life at an unexpected hour.  It seemed a cruel blow.  But the upshot was that John, in the fullness of time, became "an unusual proof of His patience, providence, and grace."⁵

No wonder they call that grace "amazing."

Maternal Grace
In the beginning, there is grace.

¹John Newton, introduction by Bruce Hindmarsh, "The Life and Spirituality of John Newton" (Vancouver, BC: Regent College Publishing, 1998), 17.
²Ibid.
³Ibid., 18.
⁴Quoted in "A Faith Grows in Brooklyn," by Carolyn Drake.  National Geographic, February 2006.
⁵Newton, Hindmarsh, "The Life and Spirituality of John Newton," 18.

Excerpted from "Finding God in the Story of Amazing Grace." Copyright 2007 by Kurt Bruner & Jim Ware.  Used by permission of SaltRiver Books (an imprint of Tyndale House Publishers).

Kurt Bruner is a graduate of Talbot Seminary.  He has authored books with combined sales of over 500,000 copies.

Jim Ware studied at Fuller Theological Seminary and is now a writer living in Colorado Springs with his wife and six children.  Jim's books include "God of the Fairy Tale" and "Finding God in the Land of Narnia."

Bruner and Ware are the co-authors of "Finding God in the Lord of the Rings" and "Finding God in the Land of Narnia."