Most "Amazing" Worship Song

In one dimly lit room in the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, OH was a choir of humming. There were no pictures at all, but yet a story was being told. On the walls were carved the names of the ships that carried the cargo of the African diaspora who were to be slaves throughout Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean. The hum that I heard was the melody to what would become, in my opinion, the most amazing worship song ever written. You could hear the cries, the fears, the hurt, and also the hope of survival and salvation in those groans. I had been doing fine as I walked the halls of the museum until I came to that room and it just about floored me. I stood still as tears fought their way to the surface of my eyes and over the edge of my eyelids and began to race down my face and I listened.

Why don't you listen with me for a moment (hum the melody to the original Amazing Grace)?

And I wrote. Here are excerpts of a poem I started.

...I put a voice to history
the walls began to sing a song without lyrics
if was as if the Holy Spirit was echoing the pain
of those trapped in the bowels of the Trans-Atlantic slaveships
yet it was the harmony and melody of courageous voices
who dared to survive...

...I put faces to history
adorned with the clanging disgraceful jewelry
of chains that likely fit the ankles and wrists of the pirates
better than those in captivity
The misguided activity
named slavery
thought to benefit the land of the free economically
after all...someone's hands had to pick the cotton and
cultivate the rice...

...I put voices to history
on that night I believe the Spirit
sounded like (humming Amazing Grace)
and my spirit felt the gamut of emotions
from sad to mad to a joy that deserved tears
because that joy was born out of a remembrance of pain

See, before the words were ever written there was this melody born from the collaboration of the Holy Spirit and the spirits of broken, stolen Africans. The reason why I say this is the greatest worship song ever written is because of the powerful inspiration of the Spirit of God (not that other songs weren't inspired by the Spirit). Aside from what it does to me every time I hear the song, especially in the museum that day, two passages of Scripture are brought to life. In Romans 8:26 the Bible says "the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words." That melody came from that place! I would they have words in the bottom of a slave ship, taken from your home, separated from family and traveling across the world to an unknown place. The Spirit had words though. I felt such a powerful sense of God while standing in that room. The other verse is Isaiah 57:15 where God says, "I dwell in the high and holy place and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite." God was on those ships! God was in that room in Cincinnati! God is in the melody of that song! Hundreds of years later I can stand in an integrated room of thousands (as many African Americans have done before me) speaking about that same God! God is Amazing Grace!