The Journey: Day Thirty-Nine:

The Journey: Forty Days of Promise
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?

The Journey: Day Thirty-Five--Emptying Our Crop

The Journey: Forty Days of Promise
Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity

Day Thirty-Five: Emptying Our Crop

Welcome to day thirty-five 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 Thirty-Five: Emptying Our Crop[1]

Earlier we met Amanda Berry Smith as we listened to how her biological mother and grandmother guided her. Other female relatives and non-relatives were part of her community of counselors.

Smith recounts the agony of her soul due to a loveless marriage with her husband, James. One particular morning her heart was so sore that she felt she “could not bear any more.” She prayed, “Lord, is there no way out of this?” As she wept and prayed, “the Lord sent Mother Jones.”

In Mother Jones’ presence, Smith tries mightily to suppress her tears and her troubles. Seeing through the façade, Mother Jones pointedly inquires, “Well, Smith, how do you do?”

The dam burst. “O, Mother Jones, I am nearly heart-broken; James is so unkind.” Smith then shares everything she had tried, in her own effort, to change her husband, and “yet he was unkind.”

Mother Jones joins with Smith by sharing her story. “Well, that is just the way Jones used to do me.” She then integrates God’s story into her story and Smith’s story. “But when God sanctified my soul He gave me enduring grace, and that is what you need . . .”

At that moment, the spiritual light bulb came on. “That is just what I need; I have always been planning to get out of trials, instead of asking God for grace to endure.” Through Mother Jones’ mother wit, God enlightened Smith to the realization that finding God is more important than finding relief.

Learning Together from Our Great Cloud of Witnesses

1. We discovered numerous examples of mother wit in Amanda Berry Smith’s life and ministry. Which ones stand out to you? Why?

2. How could you apply them to your life and ministry?

[1]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.

The Journey: Day Thirty-Four--Sisters of the Spirit

The Journey: Forty Days of Promise
Celebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity

Day Thirty-Four: Sisters of the Spirit

Welcome to day thirty-four 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 Thirty-Four: Sisters of the Spirit[1]

In the South, they faced slavery; in the North, prejudice. Everywhere they confronted double oppression—they were black and they were female.

Their remarkable stories must be told for the sake of all women, regardless of race. Their independence and strength, boldness and courage, ministry and sacrifice, care and concern, despite overwhelming obstacles, provide extraordinary models for women today.

The historical invisibility of African American Christian women is inexcusable. As the following pages attest, history is replete with countless black female exemplars of soul care and spiritual direction. Their obscurity is due to our willful blindness, not their lack of brilliance. Shining a light on their stories illuminates for all of us the visible, palpable ways in which they sustained, healed, reconciled, and guided, not only individuals, but an entire nation.

Mother Wit

Feminine African American spiritual directors followed the ancient model that Moses outlines in Deuteronomy 6:6-7. “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”

With biological children and with “spiritual” children, with females and with males, older African American women shared their “mother wit”—their proverbial wisdom found in the Scriptures, cultivated in community, and applied to daily life. One former slave from Louisiana offers her picturesque description of mother wit. “I got Mother Wit instead of an education. Lots of colored people in offices and school don’t seem to know what Mother Wit is. Well, it’s like this: I got a wit to teach me what’s wrong. I got a wit to not make me a mischief-maker. I got a wit to keep people’s trusts. No one has to tell me not to tell what they say to me in confidence, for I respect what they say, and I never tell. I’m glad I had good raisin.’”

The mother wit schoolhouse was life, the textbook was the Bible. The lesson plan highlighted the generational passing of insights for living. The curriculum included reconciling (being taught “what’s wrong”), guiding (not being a “mischief-maker”), rapport building (“keep people’s trusts”), confidentiality (“I never tell”), respectful listening (“I respect what they say”), and so much more.

Learning Together from Our Great Cloud of Witnesses

1. What impact could knowledge of African American sisters of the Spirit have upon Americans? African Americans? African American females?

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

3. Who has offered you mother wit: biblical wisdom filtered through mature life experience applied to your specific life situation? How? What impact has it had on you?


[1]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.