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.

The Forty-Day Journey of Promise

Day Five: Beauty from Ashes—The Intention of Jehovah

Note: Welcome to The Journey, our forty-day blog series where 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.

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 (for his background, click here) believed, 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 his background, click here) 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 (Post a Comment for a Chance to Receive a Copy of Beyond the Suffering)

1. How could the truth that “God is good even when life is bad” impact your life and ministry?

2. How could “looking at life with spiritual eyes” impact your life and ministry?

The Forty-Day Journey of Promise

Day Three: Jesus with Skin On

Note: The Journey is our forty-day blog series where 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.

Encountering Every Misery for You

Olaudah Equiano’s empathy for his sister was Herculean (click here for part one and the background to their 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, he 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 (Post a Comment for a Chance to Receive a Copy of Beyond the Suffering)

1. Who is “Jesus with skin on” for you? How does this person minister to you?

2. How can you be “Jesus with skin on” for people in your life?

3. In your life and in your ministry to others, how vital is candor—honesty with self and with God about the agonies of life lived in a fallen world?

4. In your life, how could you have spiritual eyes to trust God’s good heart in every occurrence of your life?

The Forty-Day Journey of Promise

Day Two: The Power of Personal Presence

Note: The Journey is our forty-day blog series where we’re learning life lessons from the legacy of African American Christianity. The series is based upon material from my book Beyond the Suffering. If you’d like to learn more about Beyond the Suffering, click here.

Light to Walk By

When darkness overwhelms our path, where do we find light to walk by? When we despair even of life, sometimes the power of personal presence is all that keeps us keeping on.

Olaudah Equiano and his sister were soon deprived of even the comfort of weeping together (click here for Part One and the background to their weeping).

“The next day proved a day of greater sorrow than I had yet experienced; for my sister and I were then separated, while we lay clasped in each other’s arms; it was in vain that we besought them not to part us: she was torn from me, and immediately carried away, while I was left in a state of distraction not to be described. I cried and grieved continually; and for several days did not eat any thing but what they forced into my mouth.”

Over the ensuing months, Equiano frequently changed masters. Weighed down by grief and a ravenous desire to return to his family, he decided to seize the first opportunity to escape. However, during a failed attempt he realized that the expanse that separated him from his home was too great and too dangerous.

“I . . . laid myself down in the ashes, with an anxious wish for death to relieve me from all my pains.”

Left of the Rising Sun

Death refused to visit. Instead, Equiano was sold repeatedly, each time “carried to the left of the sun’s rising, through many dreary wastes and dismal woods, amidst the hideous roarings of wild beasts.”

Being “left of the sun’s rising” paints a poetic picture of hopelessness—reflecting an absence of the hope that people have when they are “right of the rising sun” and thus anticipating that the sun will soon approach to dispel their darkness.

Equiano had been traveling in this manner for a considerable time when one evening, to his great surprise, traders brought his dear sister to the house where he was staying. “As soon as she saw me she gave a loud shriek, and ran into my arms. I was quite overpowered; neither of us could speak, but, for a considerable time, clung to each other in mutual embraces, unable to do any thing but weep.”

Ministry Even in Agony

For a time, the joy of their reunion distracted them from their misfortunes. But this, too, passed.

“For scarcely had the fatal morning appeared, when she was again torn from me for ever! I was now more miserable, if possible, than before. The small relief which her presence gave me from pain was gone, and the wretchedness of my situation redoubled my anxiety after her fate, and my apprehensions lest her sufferings should be greater than mine, when I could not be with her to alleviate them.”

Even in his agony, Equiano offers words of insight into ministry. Note that it was “her presence” that gave him relief from his pain, and that he longed to “be with her to alleviate” her suffering.

Before all else fails, implement what never fails—personal presence.

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

1. How could your people-ministry grow if you focused on the power of presence?

2. Have you ever experienced the hopelessness of feeling like you were to the left of the rising sun—that your dark night would never end? If so, how did God comfort you during the dark night of your soul?

The Forty-Day Journey of Promise

Day One: From Victims to Victors

Where Do You Find Hope?

When life crushes the dreams you dreamed, where do you find hope? When suffering invades your life, who do you turn to for examples of moving from victim to victor? We uncover amazing examples of moving beyond suffering to God’s healing hope in the narratives of the great cloud of African American witnesses.

The Journey Begins: Soul-Destroyers and Soul-Deliverance

Free born Africans were ripped away from spouses, parents, children, village, and culture by capture. Stripped of everything, overnight they were transformed from farmers, merchants, scholars, artisans, or warriors into possessions. Without family, without status, they were treated as merchandise, as things—a mere extension of their captors’ will.

James Bradley portrays the dehumanization of capture in all its horror in a letter that he wrote in 1834 while a student at Lane Seminary in Cincinnati.

“I think I was between two and three years old when the soul-destroyers tore me from my mother’s arms, somewhere in Africa, far back from the sea. They carried me a long distance to a ship; all the way I looked back and cried.”

Without a doubt, free-born Africans were victims of an inhumane institution. Yet, they were also victors wrestling to maintain their humanity and personhood. But how? In the midst of soul-destroyers, where did they find soul-deliverance? Their “Capture Narratives” tell their tale and provide our answer.

Born Free

“I . . . acknowledge the mercies of Providence in every occurrence of my life.”

These words from the pen of the Christian Olaudah Equiano might seem trite until we realize that they introduce the narrative of his harrowing kidnapping and enslavement.

Equiano was born free in 1745 in the kingdom of Benin on the coast of Africa, then known as Guinea. The youngest of seven children, his loving parents gave him the name Olaudah, signifying favored one. Indeed, he lived a favored life in his idyllic upbringing in a simple and quiet village where his father served as the “chief man” who decided disputes and punished crimes, and where his mother adored him dearly.

Bathed in Tears: Shared Sorrow Is Endurable Sorrow

At age ten, it all came crashing down.

“One day, when all our people were gone out to their works as usual, and only I and my dear sister were left to mind the house, two men and a woman got over our walls, and in a moment seized us both; and, without giving us time to cry out, or make resistance, they stopped our mouths, tied our hands, and ran off with us into the nearest wood: and continued to carry us as far as they could, till night came on, when we reached a small house, where the robbers halted for refreshment, and spent the night.”

His kidnappers then unbound Equiano and his sister. Overpowered by fatigue and grief, they had just one source of relief.

“The only comfort we had was in being in one another’s arms all that night, and bathing each other with our tears.”

Equiano and his sister model a foundational principle for moving from victim to victors—weeping together. Shared sorrow is endurable sorrow.

Far too often we rush in with words before we enter one another’s sad stories of suffering. Our hurting friends need our silence, not our speeches. The shed tear and the silent voice provide great enrichment for our spiritual friends.

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

1. What do you think and feel as you read Bradley and Equiano’s stories?

2. How could your ministry deepen if you empathetically bathed others in your tears?

Note: The Journey is our forty-day blog series where we’ll learn life lessons from the legacy of African American Christianity. This series is based upon material from my book Beyond the Suffering. If you’d like to learn more about Beyond the Suffering, click here.

Olaudah Equiano