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

Day Sixteen: Leaping to My Feet

Welcome to day sixteen 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 Sixteen: Leaping to My Feet[1]

African American conversion accounts splendidly assimilate the “two sides” of reconciliation. First, God’s Spirit hooks in the heart—he loads the conscience with guilt, bringing the sinner to the point of saying, “It’s horrible to sin.”

But the Spirit never leaves us there. He causes sinners to leap to their feet—he lightens the conscience with grace, bringing the sinner to the place of saying, “It’s wonderful to be forgiven!”

Jarena Lee

Jarena Lee’s conversion narrative displays the potency of these twin Gospel themes. Born on February 11, 1783, in Cape May, New Jersey, Lee grew up with parents ignorant of the Gospel. At age 24, she was converted under the preaching ministry of a Presbyterian missionary and of Reverend Richard Allen.

The year is 1804, and Lee undergoes deep conviction as she hears the Presbyterian minister preach from the Psalms. “Lord, I am vile, conceived in sin, born unholy and unclean. Sprung from man, whose guilty fall corrupts the race, and taints us all.”

In response, she writes, “This description of my condition struck me to the heart, and made me feel in some measure, the weight of my sins, and sinful nature. But not knowing how to run immediately to the Lord for help, I was driven of Satan, in the course of a few days, and tempted to destroy myself.”

In fact, Lee senses Satan suggesting to her that she drown herself in a brook near her home, in which there was a deep hole where the waters whirled about among the rocks. Resisting this temptation, her mind reminds tortured. Continuing to search for peace, she finds only doubt.

Grace for Our Disgrace

Experienced soul physicians recognize her symptoms as the result of preaching guilt without grace. Guilt minus grace always equals Satan’s condemning narrative of despair.

The Apostle Paul prescribes his antidote. “Where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (Romans 5:20). Competent ambassadors of reconciliation know that grace is God’s prescription for our disgrace.

An Expert Soul Physician

Reverend Richard Allen was such a man. Attending an afternoon service in which Allen was preaching, Lee perceives in the center of her heart the sin of malice, and she receives the forgiveness of God.

“That instant, it appeared to me as if a garment, which had entirely enveloped my whole person, even to my fingers’ end, split at the crown of my head, and was stripped away from me, passing like a shadow from my sight—when the glory of God seemed to cover me instead.”

Like Adam and Eve in the Garden, God covers Lee’s shameful nakedness with garments purchased in and cleansed by blood. Immediately, she celebrates the wonders of forgiving grace.

“That moment, though hundreds were present, I did leap to my feet and declare that God, for Christ’s sake, had pardoned the sins of my soul. Great was the ecstasy of my mind, for I felt that not only the sin of malice, but all other sins were swept away together.”

Lee and a multitude of other African Americans depicted conversion using the biblical metaphor of rebirth. The result of being born again by forgiving grace was twofold: a new nurture—having a new relationship to God as beloved sons and daughters, and a new nature—having a new identity in Christ as cleansed saints.

Learning Together from Our Great Cloud of Witnesses

1. African American soul physicians understood salvation to be more than a quick praying of a “canned” prayer. What do you think of their view of salvation?

2. African American soul physicians taught that grace super abounds over guilt. In our Gospel presentations today, do we tend to highlight only guilt, only grace, or a “splendid assimilation” of both?

[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.