The Forty-Day Journey of Promise

Black History Month: Day of Reflection

Note: Welcome to the final day of The Journey, our forty-day blog series from MLK Day through the end of Black History Month. We’ve learned life lessons from the legacy of African American Christianity. I’ve based our series on material from my book Beyond the Suffering. To learn more about Beyond the Suffering, including downloading a free chapter, click here.

My Reflections: A Gift To and a Gift From

As I promised at the outset, on our 41st day, we pause to reflect. We pause to celebrate the legacy of African American Christianity and to celebrate the heroes and heroines of Black Church history.

In the introduction to Beyond the Suffering, we noted that Black Church history is a gift to African Americans and a gift from African Americans.

As a gift to, it honors the tremendous contributions made by African American believers—contributions frequently neglected by most historians.

As a gift from, it equips and empowers all people of all races as we learn life lessons from female and male heroes of Black Church history.

It is my prayer that the past forty days have served a similar purpose: that my longest-ever blog series has been a gift to and a gift from African Americans.

It never ceases to amaze me that so few people are aware of these amazing Christians and their remarkable life stories. I hope their treasure will now remain unburied.

Biblical Reflections: From the Past Into the Future

We complete our journey with two biblical reflections.

*Reflection # 1: Hebrews 11:1-12:3

The great past cloud of witnesses, though dead, their lives yet speak. I’m thankful that our legacy outlives us.

I’m thankful for the African American legacy. Their legacy encourages and empowers us to live beyond the suffering and to leave a loving legacy for future generations.

*Reflection # 2: Revelation 7:9

When the Apostle John peers into the future, he does not see a homogenized eternity. Instead, he sees a multi-cultural future throng gathered together for ever and ever in joint worship of the King of Kings.

I’m thankful that diversity will outlive the old heaven and the old earth. I’m thankful that in the new heaven and the new earth our differences will be celebrated. I want to live today in light of that future intercultural day.

Your Reflections: Join the Conversation (Post a Comment for a Chance to Receive a Copy of Beyond the Suffering)

*Reflecting on everything you’ve read during these forty days of Black History Month, what topics and themes stand out to you? Why? What will you do with these concepts?

*How can we keep the gift going and growing?

*How can we expand intercultural ministry and multicultural relationships?

Tags: African American Christianity, Beyond the Suffering, Black Church History, Black History Month, The Journey

The Forty-Day Journey of Promise

Day Forty: Lift Every Voice

Note: Welcome to The Journey, our forty-day blog series from MLK Day through the end of Black History Month. We’re learning life lessons from the legacy of African American Christianity. The series is based upon material from my book Beyond the Suffering. To learn more about Beyond the Suffering, including downloading a free chapter, click here.

Two Visions of America

How we view America depends upon our experience in America. In American history, there has been a great “tournament of narratives”: two competing visions of the American narrative. In our 40th post in our 40-Day Journey of Promise, we compare and contrast the typical European vision and experience of American with the typical African vision and experience of America.

Understanding these drastically different perspectives can be of great assistance toward understanding one another–toward unity in diversity.  

The Promised Land

When European Christians immigrated to America, they chose a dominant biblical lens through which to view themselves corporately. They were, according to Puritan John Winthrop, “a city upon a hill.” As God’s new chosen people fleeing the religious tyranny of Europe, if they obeyed God they would “find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies.”

From the earliest period of their migration to the New World, European colonists spoke of their journey as the New Exodus of a New Israel from bondage in Egypt to the Promised Land of milk and honey. For these early European Americans, America already was the Promised Land. White Europeans left Europe in an exodus due to persecution, finding religious and political freedom and likening it to the children of Israel crossing the Red Sea.

For their ancestors, the message rings true to this day—they are God’s chosen people and America is an especially God-blessed land. In fact, many would be shocked to realize that anyone has ever seen it any differently.

Bound for the Promised Land

Whereas Europeans freely sailed to the “land of the free,” Africans were stolen away from their free lands, stowed in the hideous holds of the slave ships, and brought to the “land of bondage.” For Europeans the Exodus already occurred, for Africans it was yet future. Europeans lived in the Promised Land. Africans were bound for the Promised Land.

“For African-Americans the journey was reversed: whites might claim that America was a new Israel, but blacks knew that it was Egypt, since they, like the children of Israel of old, still toiled in bondage. Unless America freed God’s African children, this nation would suffer the plagues that had afflicted Egypt.”

Could two biblically-based visions of one nation be any more different? Both shared a common stock of biblical metaphors: Egypt, Exodus, the Promised Land. However, each saw the vision through different lenses.

The African American National Anthem

James Weldon Johnson summarizes the African American national narrative brilliantly. Lift Every Voice has been called “The African American National Anthem.”

James Weldon Johnson

Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring,

Ring with the harmonies of liberty;

Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,

Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,

Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;

Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,

Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,

Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;

Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet,

Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered;

Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last

Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,

Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;

Thou who hast by thy might, led us into the light,

Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.

Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.

Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,

True to our God, true to our native land.

We’ve Come This Far by Faith

We’ve come this far by faith. The journey has been dark, but it’s taught us great faith lessons leading us toward the light.

God calls us on our voyage to live an emancipated spiritual life. Through Christ’s power at work within us, we can stand, as one, true to God and true to our native land.

Join the Conversation (Post a Comment for a Chance to Receive a Copy of Beyond the Suffering)

1. Concerning the “Tournament of Narratives,” how surprised are you that there have been such diametrically opposed views of the American experience?

2. How can your understanding of these different viewpoints equip you to minister more effectively cross-culturally?

Tags: African American National Anthem, Bound for the Promised Land, Lift Every Voice, Promised Land, Tournament of Narratives

The Forty-Day Journey of Promise

Day Thirty-Nine: Following the North Star

Note: Welcome to The Journey, our forty-day blog series from MLK Day through the end of Black History Month. We’re learning life lessons from the legacy of African American Christianity. The series is based upon material from my book Beyond the Suffering. To learn more about Beyond the Suffering, including downloading a free chapter, click here.

Father to the Fatherless

We follow the North Star guidance of African American sisters of the Spirit by encouraging spiritual sisters with the good news that the Spirit intimately indwells them. Jarena Lee reminds us of this truth because she experienced it.

Jarena Lee

In the course of six years, five of her family members died, including her husband. In response, she wrote:

“I was now left alone in the world, with two infant children, one of the age of about two years, the other six months, with no other dependence than the promise of Him who hath said—I will be the widow’s God, and a father to the fatherless.”

Turning to Our Brothers and Sisters

Along with Lee, we need to help our spiritual friends to see the two primary ways that the indwelling Spirit ministers. First, he uses his other children. Lee recounts:

“Accordingly, he raised me up friends, whose liberality comforted and solaced me in my state of widowhood and sorrows. I could sing with the greatest propriety the words of the poet, ‘He helps the stranger in distress, the widow and the fatherless, and grants the prisoner sweet release.”

Such awareness is vital. The temptation when we are hurt by people is to turn only to God. This pseudo-spirituality is not the way of the Spirit. African American female exemplars like Lee demonstrate that the Spirit uses brothers and sisters of the Spirit to sustain, heal, reconcile, and guide us.

Turning to Our Heavenly Father

Second, the Spirit does indeed work directly in and on our hurting hearts. Lee understood this truth, also.

“I can say even now, with the Psalmist, ‘Once I was young, but now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.’ I have ever been fed by his bounty, clothed in his mercy, comforted and healed when sick, succored when tempted, and every where upheld by his hand.”

This “balancing” awareness is also crucial. The temptation when we are helped by people is to keep turning only to people. These sisters of the Spirit led people to the Spirit for His sustaining, healing, reconciling, and guiding. Our source of spiritual care is not either/or. It is both/and.

Join the Conversation (Post a Comment for a Chance to Receive a Copy of Beyond the Suffering)

1. How can our churches become places where we turn to one another as brothers and sisters and to God as Father for sustaining, healing, reconciling, and guiding?

2. What do these inspiring messages from sisters of the Spirit inspire you to do?

Tags: Beyond the Suffering, Black History Month, Jarena Lee, North Star, The Journey

The Forty-Day Journey of Promise

Day Thirty-Eight: Who Are You in Christ?

Note: Welcome to The Journey, our forty-day blog series from MLK Day through the end of Black History Month. We’re learning life lessons from the legacy of African American Christianity. The series is based upon material from my book Beyond the Suffering. To learn more about Beyond the Suffering, including downloading a free chapter, click here.

Calling Out a People

In September 1832, in Boston, Massachusetts, Maria Stewart did something that no American-born woman of any race before her undertook. “She mounted a lecture platform and raised a political argument before a ‘promiscuous’ audience, that is, one composed of both men and women.”

Maria Stewart

According to her personal testimony, she was a woman of profound Christian faith, moved by the Spirit to “willingly sacrifice my life for the cause of God and my brethren.” In the climate of that day, she did indeed take her life in her hands. In her characteristic fiery style, familiar to readers of her articles in The Liberator, she argued against the colonization movement to ship African Americans to West Africa. Using biblical imagery she challenged her racially mixed audience asking, “Why sit ye here and die?”

She called blacks and whites to action, in particular urging black Americans to demand their God-given rights. “Her message was unsparing and controversial, intended as a goad to her people to organize against the tyranny of slavery in the South and to resist and defy the restrictions of bigotry in the North.”

Arousing to Exertion

To fully comprehend Stewart’s staggering accomplishments, we have to backtrack to her less than advantageous upbringing.

“I was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1803; was left an orphan at five years of age; was bound out in a clergyman’s family; had the seeds of piety and virtue early sown in my mind, but was deprived of the advantages of education, though my soul thirsted for knowledge. Left them at fifteen years of age; attended Sabbath schools until I was twenty; in 1826 was married to James W. Stewart; was left a widow in 1829; was, as I humbly hope and trust, brought to the knowledge of the truth, as it is in Jesus, in 1830; in 1831 I made a public profession of my faith in Christ.”

Married at 23, widowed at 26, converted at 27; she challenged a nation at 28. In the fall of 1831, she entered the offices of William Lloyd Garrison, the editor of the newly established abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. Stewart handed Garrison the manuscript of her challenge to African Americans to sue for their rights. Relegated to the paper’s “Ladies Department,” both ladies and gentlemen received her confrontation.

Stewart entitled her work Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality: The Sure Foundation on Which We Must Build. She told her readers that she:

“Presented them before you in order to arouse you to exertion, and to enforce upon your minds the great necessity of turning your attention to knowledge and improvement.”

Here we have a young, female, African American widow writing in a white male abolitionist tabloid as a spiritual director to motivate her people to learning and action.

But God!

Stewart adeptly used a bevy of spiritual direction skills to inspire her audience. For example, she avails herself of the guiding competency of scriptural exploration.

“Many think, because your skins are tinged with a sable hue, that you are an inferior race of beings; but God does not consider you as such. He hath formed and fashioned you in his own glorious image, and hath bestowed upon you reason and strong powers of intellect. He hath made you to have dominion over the beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fish of the sea (Genesis 1:26). He hath crowned you with glory and honor; hath made you but a little lower than the angels (Psalms 8:5) . . .”

Using the biblical truth of the imago Dei (image of God), she guides her readers toward the counter-cultural but scriptural truth that, “It is not the color of the skin that makes the man, but it is the principles formed within the soul.”

Join the Conversation (Post a Comment for a Chance to Receive a Copy of Beyond the Suffering)

1. Maria Stewart focused upon who we are in Christ and the imago Dei. What did she stir up in your heart when you read her words of challenge?

2. Who are you in Christ?

Tags: Beyond the Suffering, Black History Month, Identity in Christ, Maria Stewart, Sisters of the Spirit, The Journey

The Forty-Day Journey of Promise

Day Thirty-Seven: Your Maker Is Your Husband

Note: Welcome to The Journey, our forty-day blog series from MLK Day through the end of Black History Month. We’re learning life lessons from the legacy of African American Christianity. The series is based upon material from my book Beyond the Suffering. To learn more about Beyond the Suffering, including downloading a free chapter, click here.

Jesus—The Ultimate Spiritual Friend

Julia Foote exemplifies in her life and teaching a common thread among female African American care givers—Jesus is the ultimate Spiritual Friend. These sisters of the Spirit understood that human spiritual friendship never replaces the Divine Spiritual Friend and that the human spiritual director must always direct others to the Divine Soul Physician.

Foote was born in 1823, in Schenectady, New York, the daughter of former slaves who purchased their freedom and espoused a strong Christian belief. From age ten-to-twelve, she studied diligently, especially the Bible. At fifteen, her parents moved to Albany where she was converted and joined the African Methodist Church.

At nineteen, she married George Foote, a sailor, and moved to Boston where she joined the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and began to grow deeply in her faith. Her deepening Christian experience caused a rift between her and George, and he threatened to send her back to her parents. Though they stayed together, they grew more alienated, especially when Foote began to hold evangelistic meetings in her home.

Biblical Sufferology

Speaking of why God might allow human suffering and the breakdown in human relationships, such as the one between her and her husband, Foote explains:

“God permits afflictions and persecutions to come upon his chosen people to answer various ends. Sometimes for the trial of their faith, and the exercise of their patience and resignation to his will, and sometimes to draw them off from all human dependence, and to teach them to trust in Him alone.”

For Foote, this was not some theoretical model stuck somewhere in her head. Bereft of the intimacy she longed for with her human husband, she turned more profoundly and passionately to her heavenly Groom.

Maker and Husband

When her husband left for six months at sea right after yet another argument over her faith, Foote writes:

“While under this apparent cloud, I took the Bible to my closet, asking Divine aid. As I opened the book, my eyes fell on these words: ‘For thy Maker is thine husband (Is. 54:5). I then read the fifty-fourth chapter of Isaiah over and over again. It seemed to me that I had never seen it before. I went forth glorifying God.”

Join the Conversation (Post a Comment for a Chance to Receive a Copy of Beyond the Suffering)

1. Julia Foote typified pointing others to Jesus as their ultimate Spiritual Friend. Why do you think this theme was so common among African American female soul physicians?

2. How can you apply the truth of Isaiah 54:5 to your life and ministry?

Tags: Beyond the Suffering, Black Church History, Black History Month, Julia Foote, Sisters of the Spirit, The Journey

The Forty-Day Journey of Promise

Day Thirty-Six: African American Spiritual Formation

Note: Welcome to The Journey, our forty-day blog series from MLK Day through the end of Black History Month. We’re learning life lessons from the legacy of African American Christianity. The series is based upon material from my book Beyond the Suffering. To learn more about Beyond the Suffering, including downloading a free chapter, click here.

Unbosoming Our Spiritual Conflicts

Zilpha Elaw’s was born free in Philadelphia and experienced spiritual freedom through conversion at age eighteen. In 1810, at age twenty, she married Joseph Elaw whose nominal Christianity strained their marriage. Joseph died of consumption in 1823. For the next two years, Elaw led a school for black children. In 1825, she closed the school to pursue her sense of calling from God—a calling that included a five-year ministry in England.

Throughout her ministry, Elaw emphasized mutual spiritual friendship. She addressed the dedication of her autobiography to “the Saints and faithful Brethren in Christ” in London. Reflecting on their fellowship together, she writes:

“If, therefore, there is anything in the soul reviving and thrilling Christian fellowship we have enjoyed together in the Spirit of Christ, and in the holy communion with which we have so frequently met together in the house of God, mingled our ascending petitions at the throne of grace, unbosomed our spiritual conflicts and trials to one another, and listened with devotional interest to the messages of gospel mercy, and the unfolding mysteries of divine grace . . .”

Images of Spiritual Friendship

Notice how replete her language is with images of spiritual friendship. Its purpose is to revive the soul; its mode is the practice of awe-inspiring Christian community. Its foundation is the joint worship of Christ; its pattern is mingled fellowship of Christians.

Its starting point is sustaining—so beautifully pictured by the phrase “unbosomed our spiritual conflicts and trials to one another.” Its high point is healing—so clearly summarized by the concept of grace-based spiritual conversations—“listened with devotional interest to the messages of gospel mercy, and the unfolding mysteries of divine grace.”

A Community of Disciples

As Jesus with the Twelve and Paul with Timothy, Titus, and Silas, Elaw maintained a community of disciples. Also like Jesus and Paul, Elaw had a discipleship plan or model. Specifically, she focused on the “pursuit of the higher attainments of experiential spirituality.” In the context, Elaw explains the vision associated with that statement. The goal of her mentoring spiritual direction was “the love of God being richly shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost” (communion and connection with Christ) and “the apprehension of, and conformity to, the love of Christ” (conformity to Christ).

Elaw not only had a purpose; she had a plan. In ancient language, we would call it “practicing the presence of Christ.” In today’s language, we would call it “practicing the spiritual disciplines.”

In her language, it sounds like this.

“Spirituality is such a practical acquaintance with spiritual things, and abiding sense of the existence and agency of spiritual and invisible beings, and converse with them, as gives a complete ascendancy to the moral and mental powers over the animal propensities; but it more especially consists in a discernment of the presence and operations of the Holy Spirit, fellowship with God and his Son Jesus Christ, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, together with an habitual and deep consciousness, and a blooming prospect of the momentous realities of a future life.”

This is “classic” spiritual formation—emphasizing a growing attunement to spiritual realities, putting off the old propensities and putting on the new person in Christ, practicing the presence of God, habituating oneself to the graces of God, and focusing upon the hope of heaven.

Join the Conversation (Post a Comment for a Chance to Receive a Copy of Beyond the Suffering)

1. Which images of spiritual friendship could you apply to your life?

2. What community of spiritual disciples do you lead or want to lead?

Tags: African American Church, Beyond the Suffering, The Journey, Zilpha Elaw