Keeping the Faith

Note: For part one of this blog mini-series, please visit: http://bit.ly/T7Zas and for part two, please visit: http://bit.ly/14aWH6 and for part three please visit: http://bit.ly/wJs58

Keeping the Faith

Sustaining enables suffering people to survive.

Healing and guiding encourage and empower sufferers to move beyond the suffering—to thrive.

Healing and guiding never ignore, deny, or minimize affliction; they always heroically, resiliently empower believers to keep the faith (healing) and to live out that faith active in love (guiding).

Octavia challenges her suffering spiritual friends to live their Christian faith by recognizing the common bond they share with captive Israel of old. Her work emphasizes the unshakable faith of slaves who survived and thrived despite their captivity, their ridicule, and the hypocrisy of their masters. Though urging them to be longsuffering, Octavia never encourages them to be passive.

Her husband and daughter, in their original Preface to The House of Bondage, clearly saw Octavia’s twin goals of sustaining (surviving) and healing/guiding (thriving).

“An only daughter unites with the writer [Octavia’s husband] in sending out these pages penned by a precious and devoted mother and wife, whose angelic spirit is constantly seen herein . . .” Having honored Octavia’s character, her daughter proceeds to venerate her ministry. “. . . and whose subtle and holy influence seems to continue to guide and protect both [daughter and husband] in the path over which they since have had to travel without the presence and cheer of her inspiring countenance.”

Hope Inspired through Inspired Scripture

Octavia inspires hope through inspired Scripture.

Often it involves spiritual conversations through guiding questions that draw out Aunt Charlotte’s embedded faith. Having listened to Charlotte’s testimony of repentance and faith in Christ, Octavia asks her “whether she felt lonely in this unfriendly world.”

Charlotte answers, “No, my dear; how can a child of God feel lonesome? My heavenly Father took care of me in slave-time. He led me all the way along, and now he has set me free, and I am free both in soul and body.”

At other times, Octavia’s counsel was more direct as she used scriptural exploration and Bible reading to encourage Aunt Charlotte and others. Charlotte was nearly blind by the time she met Octavia, and thus harbored no hopes of learning to read. On one occasion, while discussing the hope-giving nature of Scripture, Octavia reads Job 19:25-27 (“I know my redeemer lives”).

“Thank you, too, for it” Charlotte exclaims in response.

Apples of Gold

What stands out in Octavia’s use of spiritual conversations and scriptural explorations is her remarkable knack for selecting the right topic and/or passage for the right person at the right moment. When Aunt Charlotte shares about the inhumane, brutal treatment she received at the hands of her white masters, Octavia responds by reading the hymn All the Way My Savior Leads Me.

Charlotte replies immediately. “O, bless the Lord for the chance of hearing those word! They suit my case. I want to sing that very hymn in glory.”

To “suit the case” of another is to connect, to speak timely words, appropriate for the person and the situation. In this, Octavia follows the inspired counsel of the Apostle Paul. “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (Ephesians 4:29).

The Rest of the Story

For the rest of the story, please return to this blog for part five . . .

Note: Readers can enjoy the empowering narratives of over two-dozen African American women (and scores of African American men) narrated in Kellemen and Edwards, Beyond the Suffering. For more information, please visit: http://bit.ly/XvsTu