The Journey: Forty Days of PromiseCelebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity
Day Eighteen: Everybody’s Heart in Tune
Welcome to day eighteen of our forty-day intercultural journey. From Martin Luther King Day to the end of Black History Month we are focusing on The Journey: Forty Days of Promise—Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity.
Day Eighteen: Everybody’s Heart in Tune[1]
How did newly converted African American slaves grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ? How did they connect to one another in the Body of Christ?
A preacher we know only as the “Preacher from a God-fearing Plantation” offers us a glimpse.
“Meetings back there meant more than they do now. Then everybody’s heart was in tune, and when they called on God they made heaven ring. It was more than just Sunday meeting and then no more godliness for a week. They would steal off to the fields and in the thickets and there, with heads together around a kettle to deaden the sound, they called on God out of heavy hearts.”
The Old Ship of Zion
Another African American Christian described it like this.
“We used to steal off to de woods and have church, like de Spirit moved us—sing and pray to our own liking and soul satisfaction—and we sure did have good meetings, honey—baptize in de river, like God said. . . . We was quiet ‘nuf so de white folks didn’t know we was dere, and what a glorious time we did have in de Lord.”
“The church was a ‘Noah’s Ark’ that shielded one’s life from the rain. It was the ‘old ship of Zion’ fully capable of sailing the seas of life.”
Life Lessons for Today
Because we all too easily abandon meeting together, we have much to learn from the high priority that African American believers placed upon communal worship and fellowship.
“Their needs for guidance and comfort were immense. The awesome importance of this spiritual and emotional support can be seen by the fact that the time to engage in worship was taken from the already too-brief free times away from field work. Work time already ran from sun-up to sundown. Time for worship was taken from the brief period left for the personal needs of sanitation, sleep, food, and child rearing. This spiritual nurture must have been highly treasured indeed to motivate the sacrifice of such limited and precious free time.”
Learning Together from Our Great Cloud of Witnesses
1. “Meetings back there meant more than they do now. Then everybody’s heart was in tune, and when they called on God they made heaven ring.” In what ways does your worship experience already mirror theirs?
2. What could make this statement truer in your worship experience today?
[1]Excerpted, modified from, and quoted from Kellemen and Edwards, Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Purchase your copy at 40% off for only $10.00 at www.rpmministries.org.
No comments:
Post a Comment