Newton's Hymn of Grace

Amazing grace--how sweet the sound!--that saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.

John Newton wrote those words hundreds of years ago, at a time when British ships still carried African slaves to ports around the globe. Newton could look back on a life that used to be filled with sin and vice and wickedness. He himself was involved in the slave trade, and before that he used to laugh at and despise Christians and their gospel message.

But eventually, through several brushes with death, as well as the ministry of preaching and reading of literature, John Newton was converted. He became an ordained minister and a writer of hymns. He wrote his most famous hymn, “Amazing Grace,” in 1773 as an illustration for a New Years Day message. Today this hymn is known and sung around the world, even by secular pop singers. But sadly, many who sing these famous words fail to grasp their meaning.

As we examine this hymn, let’s consider what the Bible says makes the grace it speaks of so “amazing.” The first line tells us that the very words “amazing grace” have a “sweet” sound to the writer. Some of the sounds around us are sweet to our ears...others, not so sweet. Think of the melody of a songbird or a rippling brook...the comforting sound of a mother’s lullaby...the closing bell at the end of a long day at work or school. All of these sounds are sweet to us.

What makes the words “amazing grace” so sweet to a person’s ears is contained in the word “grace” itself, as well as the source of that grace, and also in its recipient. If we examine what grace is, from whom it comes, and to whom it is given, we will plainly see why it is so sweet to the listener, and what makes this grace so amazing.

The basic meaning of the word “grace” is some good thing that is given and received, not because it is merited or deserved, but by the good will of the one giving it. The simplest example of this is the giving of a present. If I gave you a present because I wanted you to give me one in return, that would not be grace. That gift would only be grace if I gave it simply out of a desire to bless you and do you good.

The “amazing grace” Newton writes about isn’t a common, everyday kind of present--it is a gift of immeasurable value! It is grace “that saved a wretch like me!” We read in Ephesians 2:8, “It is by grace you have been saved.”

From the very beginning chapters of Genesis, we see a mankind in need of saving. Adam and Eve, our first parents, received amazing grace from the hand of God when He created them and placed them in a beautiful paradise, the Garden of Eden. Everything in the garden was theirs to enjoy and feed upon, except one tree: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This was the one and only test God gave them to see if their love and obedience would remain faithful.

God warned them that eating of the forbidden tree would bring death, but they failed to heed God’s warning. The crafty serpent brought doubt, confusion and deception into the Garden. He caused Eve to question God’s grace and rebel against His authority. Then, Eve tempted Adam to do the same thing so that both of them were guilty of disobedience and deserving of death. But God gave them more amazing grace by not carrying out their death sentence immediately. He still loved the man and woman He’d created and had already planned to save them from the full penalty for their sin against Him.

Along with delayed physical death and the other curses brought by our first parents’ sin, God also gave us a gracious promise that one of Eve’s descendants would one day defeat the serpent and rescue mankind. This future Savior would succeed where Adam and Eve failed and would provide a perfect record of obedience for God’s people! Furthermore, He would die an atoning death for His people on the cross, bearing the weight of all their sin, including the wrath of God that all our sin deserved.

Of course, that promised Savior, born thousands of years later, was none other than Jesus Christ, the Friend of Sinners.

And how we sinners needed, and still need such a friend! The grace that saves sinners comes from Jesus Himself. In the Gospel of John chapter one, we read that Jesus the living Word was “the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” The grace of Jesus Christ--His free gift to all who will receive it--is the gift of Himself, given for our salvation. How amazing that the God of the universe would take pity on poor, wretched, blind, helpless sinners, and would take on Himself a human nature--actually become one of us! He did this so that He could save us from the penalty our sins deserved.

If I offered you a present, and you left this room without it, never took it and opened it, ignored it and forgot about it, that gift would never truly be yours, would it? Well, look at the present Jesus offered: He came here to earth and was born, lived, suffered, died, was buried, arose and ascended. And He now offers the gift of forgiveness and eternal salvation to all who will receive it. But, most people never accept this gracious gift...why not? Because it is received by faith.

The Book of Hebrews tells us that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” To receive a gift by faith, a person must be convinced that the giver is really there and is able to give such a gift. Also, the gift being offered must be something that the receiver really hopes for, or desires. Most people don’t accept the fact that Jesus is offering them this saving gift, and besides, they have no desire to be saved from their sins. They laugh at the idea that God will one day make them pay the penalty for their sin in hell forever.

John chapter nine tells how Jesus gave physical sight to a man born blind. Think of it: never had this man known anything but darkness. He knew about shapes and colors, skies and stars and sunsets, only by listening to the descriptions of others. But one day Jesus took pity on him and performed a miracle by granting sight to this man.

Many of the Jewish leaders refused to believe that Jesus did this by the power of God; they insisted that Jesus was in league with the devil. But Jesus said that one of the reasons He’d come into the world was to make blind people see, and seeing people blind! We all know people who believe that they know everything, or seem to. When we try to correct them about something, they claim to know all about it already--there is nothing new they can be taught.

Some of the Jewish leaders were sure that they knew how to please God, and needed no new insight from a man like Jesus. They believed their spiritual eyes had 20/20 vision and that their record before God was just fine. Jesus told them that their guilt remained because they claimed to see without His help. So many people are like this; they are so convinced they can see clearly and God allows them to remain blind to His gift of grace.

Ephesians 2:8 goes on to say, “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” In John Newton’s words, we are “wretches”...poor, helpless, miserable sinners...who are “lost” and need to be “found”... “blind” and need the ability to “see.” Is this how we normally see ourselves? Sinners, guilty and in danger of eternal torments, unable to save ourselves, in desperate need of being saved? Or do we think we are just fine the way we are, able to please a holy God on our own, not really in need of Jesus to save us?

It is only when I realize how sinful and blind and wretched I am that I will cry out to God for a Savior, and welcome His beloved Son when He offers Himself as a gift of grace for my salvation. Nowadays we are told about how advanced and intelligent and worthy of self-esteem we humans are. How all that old talk about judgment and brimstone is just outdated nonsense. But what does the Bible say?

Romans 6:23 reminds us that “the wages of sin is death.” Not just separation of my soul from my body, but eternal separation of soul and body from God forever in Hell. Jesus suffered this kind of awful separation from His Father when He hung on the cross for sinners--but only for those sinners who place their faith in Him alone for their salvation. The verse goes on to say, “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Grace--God’s grace--saving grace for sinners. It is a free gift of forgiveness and eternal life, purchased by Christ’s suffering and death on the cross. It is amazing because it is offered freely to all who believe. Amazing because it comes from Jesus, who now sits enthroned at God’s right hand. Amazing because it is received by wretched sinners who recognize their need and bow to Christ by faith. Amazing because God Himself gives us the the spiritual “eyes” to see and desire and receive His gift.

Amazing grace--how sweet the sound!--that saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.

Speak the Word

Do I need some shocking sign--
Carmel-fire from cloven skies
To consume my sacrifice?

Should I beg a moistened fleece
On the ground otherwise dry
Ere I broach the battlefield?

Must the Master still a storm
O’er the sea He trod upon
For my fear to be becalmed?

Is my “little faith” so dim,
It must watch a dead man wake
To at last be reassured?

Must the rocks gush out a stream,
Barren wombs produce a throng,
Lest my heart be petrified?

Once my Lord stepped back, amazed
At a bold centurion’s faith:
“Speak the word...I need not see.”

Speak--you have your servant’s ear;
Breathe your word, on sacred page.
Tell me what you’d have me do...

I’ll believe in what you say--
Words that filled the fruitless void,
Told the dark, “Let there be light!”


MNA 12-31-14

A new fantasy tale begins here...

Creatures of the Dawn

Cyril often thought about his past life down in the Mourning Vale, perhaps more often than was good for him. Still, everybody he knew had been born there, many of his friends and kin still dwelt there, and Cyril knew--partly from the voice of the Stones, partly from his own inner voice--that he’d always carry a haunting kind of love for Mourning Vale in his heart.

Especially during the molting season, when his scaly hide was sliding off him and more of his body was being covered with downy white feathers, Cyril pondered the sharp contrast between that old life in the Vale and his new one here on the peaks. Today, for instance, when he woke up under his high sheltering crag on Mount Clement, smelled the clean smell of the rain that had fallen during the night, ate his fill of the sweet moss that sprang up between the rocks, and quenched his thirst from the pool in the cleft just below--today, he reflected on how alone he often felt since he left Mourning Vale. How numerous and natural-feeling his kinships and friendships had been then...before the Neubith had come.

“Good morning, Cyril.” A deep, pleasant voice hailed him from a patch of mist just up the mountain. He looked up toward the voice and smiled. Out of the mist emerged his friend Charisse, her remaining scales glistening with moisture in the brightening dawn, her feathery wings fluttering delicately, shaking her free of the dew. She approached him on thick muscular legs ending in clawed feet that expertly picked their way along the rocky hillside.

“You look well this morning,” she told him as Cyril stretched and swallowed a final mouthful of moss. “Are you ready for our journey today?”

“I suppose so,” Cyril yawned thoughtfully. He humped his back and flexed his own claws so they clicked like centipedes against the ground. Opening his eyes after his yawn, he looked deeply, honestly, into Charisse’s eyes--uncommonly large eyes that were a piercing blue shot with gold.

“Hmm,” she murmured in the soft purr that always made him warm to her. “Someone has been deep in thought already this morning. Aren’t you going to ask me to account for myself? You haven’t noticed I’ve been away?”

“Of course,” Cyril said shaking his head with embarrassment. “I’m sorry, Charisse, of course I missed you and you, too, are looking very well, and yes, I’m so looking forward to our journey today. I’ve hardly thought about much else since we planned it!”

“Easy, easy, Friend Cyril, I was only teasing you. You’re a deep thinker and have no reason to apologize for that. It’s one of the many things I enjoy about you.” She grinned as she stood next to him and bumped her wide head against his playfully.

“I...I guess I was thinking again about...about...”

“...about your family down in the Vale?” she prompted.

“Uh-huh,” Cyril admitted. “Last time I visited them, my sister and my father barely would speak to me. Even Mother became impatient when I urged them to begin listening to the Stones up the hillside.”

“Yes,” Charisse nodded sympathetically. “Yes, my family acted the same for many years before Neubith came to them.”

Cyril became animated and began moving about nervously. “Sometimes, Charisse, I just feel so helpless. I just miss them so much I could tear off these wings and go back there and forget that I ever lived on the peaks. Do you think I’m terrible? That I’m crazy? I frighten myself when I have thoughts like that.”

His friend returned to his side and placed a paw lovingly on his. “When I have those feelings, Cyril, I try hard to remember the message of the Stones I heard before I left the Mourning Vale: it said that Neubith was unbelievably wonderful--sweeter and more fulfilling than any dream of the most fanciful Vale-dweller. Yet the Stones also promised bitter memories and dangerous adventures before the final Shaking takes place. Before Daystar rises.”

“I know, I know. And I remember the message, too--at least, while I’m doing my echoing at the canyon. At those times, Daystar just seems so much closer...so much more real.” Cyril sighed a deep, deep sigh in his barrel-like chest and squinted at her comically. “So, you don’t think I’m awfully bonkers or anything?”

She poked him and nearly made him topple as she leapt away. “As bonkers as they come! Daft as a loonie-bird! Come on, slug-a-bed! We have a long way to go today and the sun is shining!” She was in the air with enormous wings unfurled, catching the mountain updrafts and smiling like a rainbow. He craned his neck, following her takeoff with his heart skipping a beat and his mind suddenly casting off its cares.

Cyril shook himself and forsook the crags with a mighty bound, his own wings whipping outward and down, propelling him into the wind. The currents were fetched up into his wings like billowing sails and he swept into a graceful arc in pursuit of his companion, now nearly a league away. Cold bracing air flattened his feathers and scales as it slid past him and tickled his folded limbs with icy joy. Freedom seemed to reach down from above and gather him into an awesome, exhilarating embrace.

Clouds sped up to meet him and just as quickly were left in his wake. The sun blazed on the rim of the world and made the peaks flame with dazzling white. He and Charisse were soaring high above the mountains of their home, leaving doubt and regret behind in the crevices below, now mere etchings in a fabulous, far-off landscape.

They were alone up here, yet together. They were born creatures of the Mourning Vale...but up here, as no place else, they were creatures of Neubith...creatures of Daystar...creatures of the Dawn!

* * *

“I must be crazy...”

Douron groaned and cracked his neck-bones as he began his daily trudge homeward. This shift had been pretty bad. Maybe the worst, he thought. Felt like it anyway.

Working for the Bosses...working in the pits...working long, dark shifts by torchlight...working for less than he was worth...working to put grub on the slab for a thankless family...working.

Some days he just couldn’t think why he put up with this life at all. He must be crazy.

Well, at least there was his secret stash. In a wood west of town, in a hole in the ground, in a box in the hole, Douron had a secret stash of shiny stuff that nobody knew about. Nobody. Not the Bosses, not his friends, not his wife, nor daughter, nor odd-ball son. Not nobody.

Someday, Douron thought. Someday, I’ll have enough shiny stuff saved up, to up and leave this wretched valley and start a new life someplace else on my own! Yeah...someday.

He coughed up some dusty stuff from this windpipe and spat it out by the roadside, beginning to feel his joints loosen up some after the long shift. The dust was the worst, he brooded. It gets everywhere. Sometimes I get so sick of it I could go crazy. He wallowed into the sluggish stream beside the road as it bent off toward the town. Rolling around in the gloomy water got most of the darned dust out from between his scales at least. He ducked his head in the stream and came up spluttering, then splashed and shook his way back to the path.

Crummy dust! he muttered. Why do I put up with work like this? It’s a flippin’ wonder I haven’t keeled over and died of some crummy disease, working like I do. I must be crazy.

He trudged into town as the twilight was lifting and a shadowy light began filtering in between the rough-hewn dwellings of mud and stone. His own small house was overshadowed by some taller buildings and there were still candles glowing in the window facing the road. Naggeril was out on the stoop beating a rug with the branch of a sticker-bush. She raised the branch in  Douron’s direction when she saw him, giving him a half-hearted wave of welcome.

“You almost done beating that thing?” he asked grumpily. “Cuz I just washed in the river and don’t feel like getting all dusty again...Darling,” he added judiciously in answer to her glower, a mixture of hurt and annoyance.

“Just trying my best to give you a decent, clean place to come home to...Sweetie,” she answered, sweeping the dust cloud out of the range of the doorway with her beater. “Go on in and eat something before you go to bed.”

“Rrrrr. Yeah. Thanks, Naggie.” He lumbered through the door, raising his tail up enough to avoid any dust still clinging to the stoop. At least, he mused as he sniffed the aroma coming from the pot near the fire, I’m married to a fair cook. Reaching up with a tentative claw, Douron tipped the pot and deposited some stew into his deep stone dish. Then he slid it across the floor into a corner and lowered his head into to bowl to eat.

Between mouthfuls he inquired, “Cyndi up yet?”

“Early practice today,” Naggeril sang out from the next room. “She was up and out a half-hour ago.” Their daughter was a sludge-skater. This was a new art-form that was catching on with youngsters in the valley. Cyndi had her heart set on getting ‘discovered.’ Douron thought it was a silly waste of time, but at least it got her out of the house.

“Have you watched her doing this sludge-skating thing? I can’t imagine she’s really built for it.” He reached for another bowl and began lapping up the liquid it contained.

“Naw, I haven’t seen her yet, but Mawgeril next door has and she says our Cyndi is doing okay.”

“Well,” he growled, “don’t you let her waste so much time with that that she slacks off her book learning. If she winds up a dummy like some kids these days, we’ll never be rid of her.”

“You just want her out of the house so you don’t have to work as much!” His wife had emerged from the bedroom and was facing him with ‘that look’ that he was not so fond of.

“I just want her to amount to something in this wretched world, Naggs! Oh, forget it. Let’s not fight, I’m too tired. I’m off to dreamland.” He plodded over to the water trough with his dishes and rinsed them off. Then he gave his wife a half-hearted kiss and crossed to the bedroom.

(to be continued...?)

(c) 2014 Mark N. Aikins

Death Wish

A deep desire for death I would embrace--
A separation, keen to mortify
Pathetic forays to obscure the face
Whose very speech created time and space--
Brought into being beings such as I.

I'd glory in magnificence above,
And cast aside the lures and baits below
That so adulterate eternal love,
That tempt to block each Spirit-bidden move
And drown His voice with flesh's dark echo.

My lusts cry out like mewling cats for meat;
They'd feed my ego fat with fawning fare,
While holiness languishes in the heat
Of prideful passions poised to rob and cheat
My Master of the fruits He'd have me bear.

How may self-glory, then, be crucified--
Entombed forever, never to arise?
Can mere devotion suffocate such pride,
All fleshly archers vainly having tried
To cleanse the flocks of folly from my skies?

Alas, no pow'r of mine can drive the stake
Into the vampire-heart that haunts my will;
It stalks me with a thirst no blood can slake,
Save His who left remission in His wake...
One Crucified, raised up, and living still!

Beholding Christ, who stooped to serve the least,
Who hid His godhead gladly in the dust,
Whose ardor for His Father never ceased,
Who welcomes thieves and paupers to His feast...
I'll glory that in Him my soul can trust.


MNA 12-22-14

Poem about our "Immanuel"

Our God Is With Us

(tune: Finlandia--"Be Still, My Soul")

Our God is with us in His grand creation,
Through which He speaks to rebels lost in sin.
With Adam’s fall, we lost God’s blest relation,
‘Til Christ should come His ransomed ones to win!
The promised One would seek His wayward nation
And in time’s fullness His reign would begin!

Our God is with us by the Word He’s spoken,
His prophets’ voices echoing through time.
Messiah, shown in symbol, type and token,
Fulfilled each one with grace and truth divine!
The Word made flesh was mocked and pierced and broken,
His blood poured out to cleanse this soul of mine!

Our God is with us by a Virgin bearing
The Lord of glory, God, yet fully man!
Veiled in a body low, our weakness daring,
He lived the sinless life none other can!
Now ris’n He lives on high, still dearly caring
For those He saved through God’s eternal plan.

Our God is with us ever by His Spirit,
His grace to give believers in our need.
When we are burdened, He will help us bear it,
As His sweet promises we gladly read!
“I’m with you always, to the end”: we hear it!
Immanuel is “God with us” indeed!

God will be with us as we stand before Him,
To answer for our lives at heaven’s throne.
While hell awaits all those who still abhor Him,
His faithful sheep will there be welcomed home!
Sharing His glory, ever we’ll adore Him--
Immanuel will claim us as His own!


MNA 12-21-14

Knowledge Is Power?

Empowering people has become one of the chief espoused goals of our age. As conscientious folks look around them at the ills of the world, as they look back in history at the deeds and mis-deeds that haunt the human race, many have concluded that it is lack of power that causes the victimization of so many unfortunate people--les miserables of Hugo’s book, so entitled.

Very often those same conscientious souls will attest that a chief--if not the chief--pathway to the empowerment of the victimized masses is education. People become victimized by those in power over them, primarily because the victims are ignorant; they lack the knowledge that the powerful possess. In point of fact, the primary knowledge lacking for these victims is the knowledge that they are victims...that they are ignorant, and the ones with power over them are in the position of taking advantage of them.

In truth, it is very natural to be impressed by those with superior knowledge. Especially when they use that knowledge in ways designed to impress the ignorant. Think of a skillful magician or illusionist as an example. I can be astounded and entertained and delighted by a magic act precisely because I am ignorant of the bits of knowledge the performer keeps hidden from my notice. I can be amazed at a science fiction movie because I have no idea how the special effects are produced.

And when a teacher speaks with great eloquence and authority on a topic with which I am only marginally acquainted, it can be equally disarming. That teacher could very well use his or her power to free students from the victimhood caused by their ignorance...or use that power in the exact opposite manner.

When it comes to empowering people with knowledge, to educating the ignorant, it must be clearly understood that education itself is a two-edged sword. A magician can use his bag of tricks to entertain a voluntary audience who paid a price for admission...or he might use his power to hoodwink and defraud unsuspecting folk out of their money.

There is a naturalistic school of thought that prevails today in educational circles. This approach to empowering the ignorant has to do with devaluing, denying and dismantling any and all belief in the supernatural and any absolute truths such as transcendent moral laws that are connected with the supernatural. If this approach to educating people doesn’t make you edgy, it should.

Naturalism is the assumption that nothing exists beyond the boundaries of the natural universe; everything is ultimately explainable in humanistic, scientific terms, and no reference to realities such as God or the spiritual realm is necessary or desirable for true knowledge of what is.

Why this should make you nervous is that, apart from a transcendent, eternal Creator, Lawgiver and Judge, there is and cannot be any adequate, ultimate standard for what is good and what is true. And power in the hands of people not guided by such standards is a highly volatile power, one that can ruin and destroy just as easily as it can give pleasure and freedom. Many civilizations have attempted to sustain themselves apart from an ultimate transcendent standard (the God of the Bible)...all of them have crumbled into dust.

Education that claims to be values-neutral, non-judgmental, making no reference to good and evil as absolutes--such “empowerment” is similar to giving a child a stick of TNT in one hand and a lighted match in the other. And this would be the most hopeful metaphor, hopeful that the child would throw the match away or let it burn out before the flame found the fuse.

Right and wrong, good and evil, godly and ungodly, true and false--these concepts are absolutely crucial for the constructive, beneficial application of knowledge. Even with those concepts firmly established, the wayward hearts of fallen people will all too rarely apply their knowledge to such virtuous uses. Without them, the emergence of virtue from such hearts becomes no more than a biochemical crap-shoot!

Leave it up to the learner himself to choose his own right and wrong? Without any reference to what a Creator might be telling him? Hmm. This sounds very familiar to me, and would to anybody who’s read the opening chapters of a book called Genesis. This approach to values choosing might sound very democratic in theory, but history (all-too-recent history, in fact) tells us that naturalistic educators are rarely free of their own preconceived preferences and agendas that are so easily intimated into the hungry minds of their pupils. Sexual values and mores is only the most obvious arena of revolutionary values that leaps to my mind.

Yes, people require power to become victors rather than victims. And knowledge is indeed power. But the same power that can light homes, streets and sports stadiums...can also be used to vaporize all of them in a big mushroom cloud.

Think of knowledge, not as power itself, but as a powerful tool. Wisdom, on the other hand, is the ability and the willingness to use that tool to achieve an ultimate goal that is good, true and beautiful. It is in the revelation of our all-wise Creator that we find the absolute standards for those three criteria.

As we receive that revelation in the pages of His Book, as we apply those standards to what and how we transmit to our students, we can prayerfully equip the ignorant (including ourselves) to avoid becoming the victims of those who wrongfully wield the tool of knowledge, as the serpent did in the Garden of Eden.

Nothing to Worry About

In the arms of my mother I learned I was safe
From the terrors and sounds of the night,
For our bedtime routine silenced all the alarms
Of the dark that so filled me with fright...
Now, the story was read, and my prayers were said,
And all lights but my night-light put out;
I can yet hear her clear whisper next to my ear:
“Love, there’s nothing to worry about.”

Since then, many a teacher and mentor of mine
Has unsettled that confident calm,
For the criminals’ wake and the ripples of war
Flood their lessons and moisten my palm.
O the world, on its face, seemed to me a safe place
‘Til my intellect started to sprout...
But those feral forays seemed, as yet, far away--
There was nothing to worry about.

Well, the warnings keep coming and cannot be stilled
Of the plagues and the hazards awaiting
All the careless and brash who don’t bother to wash,
And the damsels and dudes who are dating.
Scabies, cancer and flu are out gunning for you,
Not to mention heart flutters and gout!
But I’ve lived my life clean (at least, what can be seen),
So, there’s nothing to worry about.

Yes, I’ve made it this far now with nary a scar
And my family fixed and well-fed;
What we’ve saved in the bank armors us like a tank,
Fortified for whatever’s ahead.
Candidates just like me are in office, you see,
So with them, I have plenty of clout...
Long this nation has stood now, so why not for good?
We’ve got nothing to worry about.

Now my mother has gone to a home far beyond
And mortality looms in my eyes...
All her words, just like gold in my mem’ry, unfold
To remind me of life’s greatest prize:
“If I die ere I wake, may my soul the Lord take”
Was the plea meant to shield me from doubt;
But if I had no claim on that kind Savior’s name,
I’d have plenty to worry about!

Many times she would read of our desperate need
For forgiveness and favor with God;
Of His wrath, and the love that sent Christ from above
To be born and up Calvary plod...
There the God-man would die, and for rebels like I,
Earn the favor we can’t die without;
Jesus, You are life’s goal! Take my heart and my soul;
Give me nothing to worry about.


MNA 11.6.14