The Forty-Day Journey of Promise
Day Thirty-Nine: Following the North Star
Note: Welcome to The Journey, our forty-day blog series from MLK Day through the end of Black History Month. We’re learning life lessons from the legacy of African American Christianity. The series is based upon material from my book Beyond the Suffering. To learn more about Beyond the Suffering, including downloading a free chapter, click here.
Father to the Fatherless
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.
Jarena Lee
In the course of six years, five of her family members died, including her husband. In response, she wrote:
“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.”
Turning to Our Brothers and Sisters
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:
“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. 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.
Join the Conversation (Post a Comment for a Chance to Receive a Copy of Beyond the Suffering)
1. How can our churches become places where we turn to one another as brothers and sisters and to God as Father for sustaining, healing, reconciling, and guiding?
2. What do these inspiring messages from sisters of the Spirit inspire you to do?
