La Grâce du Ciel

During a visit back home a few years ago, my uncle took me and my daughter to his little get-away cabin in Sunshine, LA. He built the structure all by himself, erecting it in the same place where the old barn used to be on my grandparents' property. Inside the sparsely furnished room was my grandparents' kitchen table with the bright yellow top and wide chrome sides, a guitar, my grandmother's collection of plates from different vacations, and a boom box. Pulling the boom box closer, he asked if we had ever heard Amazing Grace in french. We answered no, that we'd love to hear it. And that's how I discovered and fell in love with La Grâce du Ciel by Les Amies Louisianaises. Today I found it on youtube. The video accompanying the music made me completely and utterly homesick.

La Grâce du Ciel est descendue
Me sauver de l’enfer.
J’étais perdue, je suis retrouvée,
Aveugle, et je vois clair.

Le Bon Dieu m’a ouvert le ciel.
Son Fils est mort pour moi.
C’est grâce à Jésus, mon sauveur,
Que j’ai reçu la foi.

Quand j’aurai chanté dix mille ans
Dans Sa chorale des Anges,
Je n’aurai fait que commencer
À chanter Ses louanges.

De tous les dangers de la vie,
La grâce est mon abri.
C’est cette même grâce qui m’amènera
Aux portes du paradis.

TRANSLATION:

La Grâce du Ciel
Les Amies Louisianaises
(Amazing Grace) (Traditional, French words by D. Marcantel)
Musique Acadienne Pub. Co. BMI and Pocahontas Music BMI

Grace from heaven came down
And saved me from hell
I was lost, I am found
Blind, and I see clearly

God opened heaven for me
His Son died for me
It is thanks to Jesus, my Savior
That I received faith

When I will have sung ten thousand years
In His choir of angels
I will only have begun
To sing his praises

From all the dangers of life
Grace is my shelter
It is this same grace which will lead me
To the gates of paradise.