The Journey: Forty Days of Promise
Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity
Day Thirty-Nine: Following the North Star
Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity
Day Thirty-Nine: Following the North Star
Welcome to day thirty-nine 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.
Excerpted from, 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.
Day Thirty-Nine: Following the North Star
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.
In the course of six years, five of her family members died, including her husband. “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.”
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,
Turning to Our Brothers and Sisters
“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. As we’ve seen continually in this chapter, 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.
Learning Together from Our Great Cloud of Witnesses
1. What do these inspiring messages from sisters of the Spirit inspire you to do?
2. Which of the sisters of the Spirit do you identify with the most?
Excerpted from, 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.
Day Thirty-Nine: Following the North Star
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.
In the course of six years, five of her family members died, including her husband. “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.”
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,
Turning to Our Brothers and Sisters
“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. As we’ve seen continually in this chapter, 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.
Learning Together from Our Great Cloud of Witnesses
1. What do these inspiring messages from sisters of the Spirit inspire you to do?
2. Which of the sisters of the Spirit do you identify with the most?
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