Hardships Do Not Make It Too Hard To Love

When everything in life seems to fight against family life, where do we find family unity? We uncover amazing examples of unity even through tragedy in the narratives of The Heroes of Black Church History.

Deep and Fond Affection

It has become something of a cliché to imagine that black families today find it difficult to experience stability because of a long history of instability caused by slavery and racism. While not at all minimizing the obstacles that enslaved African American families have faced, history paints a truer and more optimistic picture of their response.

Though everything fought against them, enslaved African Americans battled gallantly to maintain family cohesion—a cohesion that provided a sturdy platform from which to handle life courageously.

Communicating the message of African American family love was so important to the Reverend Thomas Jones that he bore witness to it on the very first page of his narrative.

“I can testify, from my own painful experience, to the deep and fond affection which the slave cherishes in his heart for his home and its dear ones. We have no other tie to link us to the human family, but our fervent love for those who are with us and of us in relations of sympathy and devotedness, in wrongs and wretchedness.”

Satan longs to blind African Americans to their legacy of family love. He wants all of us to believe that hardships make it too hard to love. Jones’ family and millions like them, belie that lie.

Pulling the Rope in Unison

Enslaved African American couples sustained strong marital relationships. Venture Smith was born in Dukandarra, in Guinea, about 1729. Kidnapped at age eight, Robertson Mumford purchased him a year later. After living with Mumford for thirteen years, Venture married Meg at age twenty-two. They remained together for over forty-seven years, through many trials and tribulations, until parted by death.

Venture’s narrative contains an explanation for their marital faithfulness. On the occasion of their marriage, Venture threw a rope over his cabin and asked his wife to go to the opposite side and pull on the rope hanging there while he remained and pulled on his end. After they both had tugged at it awhile in vain, he called her to his side of the cabin and by their united effort they drew the rope to themselves with ease. He then explained the object lesson to his young bride.

“If we pull in life against each other we shall fail, but if we pull together we shall succeed.”

Premarital couples, newlyweds, and seasoned married spouses would all do well to heed Venture’s guiding wisdom. In fact, singles trying to get along with friends, co-workers trying to build a strong team, and churches trying to remain unified in Christ would all be wise to follow Venture Smith’s powerful example.

Join the Conversation

What hardships can you overcome in Christ to love others like Christ? In what situations do you need to pull the rope in unison to experience harmony in Christ?

Note: This series for Black History Month is excerpted from Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care. To learn more and to read a sample chapter visit Beyond the Suffering

Maria Stewart: Hero of Black Church History

It’s 1831 and in the culture of her day, Maria Stewart has four strikes against her. She is Black; she is female; she is young; and she is widowed—in era where all four designations were horribly disrespected and dishonored.

Yet, Maria Stewart marches into the office of William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of the Liberator, an Abolitionist newspaper. She demands that Garrison publish her letter to her fellow Black sisters of the Spirit.

He does!

Read the rest of her story and learn more about who you are in Christ.

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 challenges a nation at 28. In the fall of 1831, she hands Garrison the manuscript of her challenge to African Americans to sue for their rights. 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—based upon being created in the image of God.

But God!

Using the biblical truth of the image of God, Maria Stewart guides her readers toward the counter-cultural but scriptural truth that:

“It is not the color of the skin that makes the person, but it is the principles formed within the soul.”

Stewart inspires her audience to see who they are in Christ.

“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).”

In 1831, no one was telling young Black women that they were formed in God’s image. No one was telling young Black women that they had God-given powers of reason and intellect. No one was telling young Black women that they had dominion and honor. No one…but God…and no one but Maria Stewart.

With everything stacked against her and against her sisters of the Spirit, Maria Stewart refuses to listen to the wicked ways of the world. Instead, she courageously chooses to listen to the edifying encouragement of the Word. She teaches us not to believe the world’s lies about us, but to cling to God’s truth about who we are in Christ.

Join the Conversation

Maria Stewart focused upon who we are in Christ. What did she stir up in your heart when you read her words? Who are you in Christ?

Note: This series for Black History Month is excerpted from Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care. To learn more and to read a sample chapter visit Beyond the Suffering.

Hero of Black Church History: Daniel Alexander Payne

Historians of American history frequently emphasize our “founding fathers.” Politically speaking, they highlight white males like George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, and James Madison. Spiritually speaking, they feature white males such as Roger Williams, Cotton Mather, John Winthrop, Jonathan Edwards, and Isaac Backus.

Sadly, they have often left African American founding fathers missing in action. In particular, the spiritual founding fathers of independent African American church life have been neglected, relegated to the back seat of the historical bus. We now seek to recover something of the lost legacy of loving leadership bequeathed to us by African American spiritual forefathers.

Walking the Talk

Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne was an early leader in and the official historian of the AMEC. Payne experienced numerous opportunities to live out his Christian manhood. His manliness remaining strong in the twilight years of his life. When he was in his seventies, Payne refused to stay on a train where he would have been seated in Jim Crow conditions. Standing his ground and confronting the white authorities on the train, he said to them:

“Before I’ll dishonor my manhood by going into that car, stop your train and put me off.”

After Payne left the train, “the guilty conductor looked out and said, ‘Old man, you can get on the platform at the back of the car.’ I replied only by contemptuous silence.” Payne then carried his own luggage, walking a great distance over “a heavy bed of sand” to his next speaking engagement in the deep South. Payne literally walked the talk.

The Rosa Parks of His Day

He was the Rosa Parks of his day. In fact, Rosa Parks worshipped at an AME church. During youth Sunday School she learned the history of the AME Church, including the history of one Daniel Alexander Payne. Thus we can trace the Civil Rights movement from Daniel Alexander Payne to Rosa Parks to Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dare to Be a Daniel

How did such Christian manhood develop? Payne credits his father who started him on his purposeful life.

“I was the child of many prayers. My father dedicated me to the service of God before I was born, declaring that if the Lord would give him a son that son should be consecrated to him, and named after the Prophet Daniel.”

Imagine the sense of self, the sense of biblical masculinity that Payne’s father passed to his son.

He did so not only by naming, but also by modeling. Of his father, Payne testifies:

“He was an earnest Christian and a class leader, having two classes under him—what used to be called the Seekers’ Class and the Members’ Class. He was a faithful observer of family worship; and often his morning prayers and hymns aroused me, breaking my infant sleep and slumbers.”

Join the Conversation

What impact could knowledge of an African American leader like Daniel Alexander Payne have upon Americans? African Americans? African American males?

Why do you think that the history of African American leaders like Payne is so infrequently highlighted? What could be done to reverse this pattern?

Note: This series for Black History Month is excerpted from Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care. To learn more and to read a sample chapter visit Beyond the Suffering.

Beauty from Ashes

When our fallen world falls on us, where do we find hope? We find hope’s source in the narratives of The Heroes of Black Church History.

It’s Possible to Hope

Captured Africans needed Divine consolation teaching that it’s possible to hope because God is good. So they reminded each other that God weaves good for them even from human evil against them.

Such faith, as Quobna Cugoano believed (for the rest of his story Does God Hear Our Cries?) , requires spiritual eyes like those of Joseph (Genesis 50:20).

“I may say with Joseph, as he did with respect to the evil intention of his brethren, when they sold him into Egypt, that whatever evil intentions and bad motives those insidious robbers had in carrying me away from my native country and friends, I trust, was what the Lord intended for my good.”

Cugoano makes the sweeping affirmation that, even in the face of human evil, God is friendly and benevolent, able and willing to turn into good ends whatever may occur. It is the belief that God squeezes from evil itself a literal blessing.

We can journey with our spiritual friends to the God of Joseph and Cugoano who Master-crafts every event of their lives to reveal his glory and bring them good. We can interact with them about the God who fashions for them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair (Isaiah 61:3).

Looking at Life with Spiritual Eyes

Olaudah Equiano (for the rest of his story read From Victim to Victors) taught his readers a similar lesson when he ended his narrative with these closing words of counsel.

“I early accustomed my self to look at the hand of God in the minutest occurrence, and to learn from it a lesson of morality and religion; and in this light every circumstance I have related was to me of importance. After all, what makes any event important, unless by it’s observation we become better and wiser, and learn ‘to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before God!’”

Like Equiano, we practice spiritual friendship by reminding one another that God uses unjust suffering to make us more just, unloving treatment to make us more loving, and arrogant abusers to make us more humble. Like Equiano, we exercise spiritual discipline by orienting ourselves to detect God’s hand in every circumstance—no matter how seemingly minute.

Join the Conversation

How could the truth that “God is good even when life is bad” impact your life and ministry? How could “looking at life with spiritual eyes” impact your life and ministry?

Note: This series for Black History Month is excerpted from Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care. To learn more and to read a sample chapter visit Beyond the Suffering.

Does God Hear Our Cries?

When we cry to God, does He hear? Does He see our suffering? We find answers to these life-altering questions in the narratives of The Heroes of Black Church History.

Cries and Tears: To the God Who Hears and Sees

Olaudah Equiano was not alone in perceiving with faith eyes the hidden work of God. The oft invisible hand of God softly, yet firmly, left his compassionate fingerprints on the trusting hearts of millions of enslaved Africans including Quobna Cugoano.

Cugoano was born on the coast of present-day Ghana, in the Fante village of Agimaque. In 1770, at the age of 13, he was playing with other children, enjoying peace and tranquility and the amusement of catching wild birds, “when several great ruffians came upon us suddenly.”

Led away at gunpoint, they eventually came to a town where Cugoano saw several white people, “which made me afraid that they would eat me, according to our notion as children in the inland parts of the country.” He was conducted away to the ship after a three-day imprisonment in the baracoon—a euphemistic term for concentration camps where the kidnapped Africans were held without respect to gender, family, or tribal affiliation, until slavers came to buy their cargo.

“It was a most horrible scene; there was nothing to be heard but the rattling of chains, smacking of whips, and the groans and cries of our fellowmen.” Cugoano’s experience was anything but rare. Torment saturated the months-long experience from capture to importation. The process was physically and psychologically bewildering.

After briefly describing his external situation, Cugoano highlights his internal anguish.

“I was thus lost to my dear indulgent parents and relations, and they to me. All my help was cries and tears, and these could not avail; nor suffered long, till one succeeding woe, and dread, swelled up another.”

Jehovah Sabaoth: The Lord Almighty

He was not isolated in his agony.

“The cries of some, and the sight of their misery, may be seen and heard afar; but the deep sounding groans of thousands, and the great sadness of their misery and woe, under the heavy load of oppressions and calamities inflicted upon them, are such as can only be distinctly known to the ear of Jehovah Sabaoth.”

How did he, how did they, how do we maintain our souls when treated soullessly? Like Cugoano, we entrust ourselves to Jehovah Sabaoth: the Lord Almighty, the Lord of Hosts who rules over his universe with affectionate sovereignty. Like Hagar, the slave forced to bear her master’s child (Genesis 16:1-4), we commune with the God who hears our misery (Genesis 16:11). We pray to “the God who sees me” (Genesis 16:13).

We minister healing soul care to our spiritual friends suffering under unspiritual treatment by encouraging them to groan to God. We encourage such groaning by helping them to cling to biblical images of God: the Warrior God who spoke the universe into existence and still speaks powerfully today, the God with ears cupped to hear their cries, the God with eyes like the Hubble telescope to see their misery.

Join the Conversation

In our times of suffering, what images of God should fill our minds? How could you help your spiritual friends to see God as the Warrior God speaking powerfully today, the God with ears cupped to hear their cries, and the God with eyes like the Hubble telescope to see their misery?

Note: This series for Black History Month is excerpted from Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care. To learn more and to read a sample chapter visit Beyond the Suffering.

Jesus with Skin On

When people we love are suffering, how can we help? How can we care like Christ? We uncover amazing examples of moving beyond suffering to God’s healing hope in the narratives of The Heroes of Black Church History.

Encountering Every Misery for You

Olaudah Equiano’s empathy for his sister was Herculean (read From Victim to Victor for part one of Equiano’s narrative).

“Yes, thou dear partner of all my childish sports! thou sharer of my joys and sorrows! happy should I have ever esteemed myself to encounter every misery for you, and to procure your freedom by the sacrifice of my own!”

What a model of incarnational suffering. In his letter of spiritual consolation to his long-lost sister, Equiano does more than say, “I understand your feelings.” He does more than say, “I feel what you feel.” He says, “I am willing to take on your pain—to encounter your every misery for you.

Equiano is reminiscent of the Apostle Paul who, in Romans 9:2-3, shares his great empathy and unceasing anguish for his Jewish brethren—feeling their feelings. In this passage, Paul wishes himself accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of his brothers—encountering their misery for them.

Like Paul and Equiano, we are to be “Jesus with skin on.” As Jesus pitched his tent among us, took on flesh, assumed the very nature of a servant, was made in human likeness, and became sin for us, so we must intimately engage our spiritual friends. Aloof, detached, arms-length ministry is neither biblical nor historical.

Hope Deferred Makes the Heart Sick: Candor

Eventually Equiano was sold to a wealthy widow with a son his age. After two months, he began to settle in, hoping that he had found a form of stability with his new family. However, his hope vanquished when he was stolen again. He rehearses his immeasurable despondency grasping for words to communicate what exceeds human language.

“Thus, at the very moment I dreamed of the greatest happiness, I found myself most miserable: and seemed as if fortune wished to give me this taste of joy only to render the reverse more poignant. The change I now experienced was as painful as it was sudden and unexpected. It was a change indeed from a state of bliss to a scene which is inexpressible by me . . . and wherein such instances of hardship and fatigue continually occurred as I can never reflect on but with horror.”

Have you been there? At the moment of your greatest happiness, life intrudes. Misery waltzes in. The poison of misfortune spoils your banquet of joy. If so, then what? Pretend? Ignore? Seek a diversion?

Equiano chooses candor. He chooses journaling. Both wise choices. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. Heart sickness requires the biblical medicine of candor both with God and with self. Very often, such candor is most effective when pen hits paper and we write with honesty about the instances of hardship and fatigue that we experience.

It was during these evil circumstances, and many more to come, that Equiano acknowledged his heavenly Father’s good heart and Christ’s merciful providence in every occurrence of his life.

Join the Conversation

Who is “Jesus with skin on” for you? How does this person minister to you? How can you be “Jesus with skin on” for people in your life?

Note: This series for Black History Month is excerpted from Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care. To learn more and to read a sample chapter visit Beyond the Suffering.