Sojourner Truth, Faith from the Heart
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So Thankful for the Renovare Book Club and The Narrative of Sojourner Truth
She didn’t know how to read. She didn’t know how to write. She was sold away from her parents at nine years old. She was beaten. She was raped. Her first husband was forbidden to come to see her and then beaten to death when he disobeyed. Her children were taken away from her. She didn’t have any money.
But she knew God. Amidst unfathomable suffering, He revealed Himself to her. As a young child, “in the evening when her mother’s work was done, she would sit down under the sparkling vault of heaven, and calling her children to her, would talk to them of the only Being that could effectually aid or protect them.”
Thinking God couldn’t hear her unless she spoke out loud, she found a spot on her master’s property. When no one told her she needed a sanctuary, God led her to “a small island in a small stream, covered with large willow shrubbery, beneath which the sheep had made their winding path and sheltered themselves from the noon-day sun.” Weaving the branches together into a dome surrounding her, with the water flowing, she could pour out her heart to God, without fear of being heard.
When she didn’t know that Jesus was the God she’d been praying to. God revealed it to her. Being illiterate, she asked others to read the bible to her. When she noticed adults would add their own commentary to the pure words of scripture, she started to ask children instead.
When her son was illegally sold out of state, this courageous, penniless, barefoot, African American woman, 30 years before the Civil War, believed God to be her defender. Walking to the courthouse she went from person to person until she stood before the mocking judge, asking what she needed to do to bring the wrongdoers to justice and her son back home.
When her master reneged on his promise to grant her freedom, she fled. Risking imprisonment, beatings, or death if she was caught. She walked through the fields trusting God to lead her to the Quaker family she’d heard would help.
In 1826 at 29 years old she was freed. Three years later she moved to New York City and started preaching. 14 years later, she heard God call her to “go east and tell others about Him.” Taking the name “Sojourner” she committed to follow God wherever He asked her to go and “Truth” to bring God’s truth to others.
With a pillowcase holding a few garments, a little bit of food, and two shillings, without a destination, or assurance of a place to sleep each night she set out; a vulnerable, African American woman, with no money, protection, or education in obedience to Him.
We hear of Sojourner Truth as a freedom fighter, and woman’s suffrage leader. But what we find in her story, greatest of all, is a passionate follower of Jesus.
She knew Jesus from the heart. Without any worldly skills, she knew how to pray. She knew how to hear. She could sing hymns of the church and hymns from her heart. She could praise God as she looked up at the stars as the breeze wafted by her face.
Her lack kept her eyes on heaven, her ears keen to the Father’s voice, and her faith centered in her heart, not her head. With books and commentaries unattainable, God gave her something better. He gave her Himself.
Her courage challenges me. Her relationship with God and the simplicity of her faith inspire me.
When I think of her little island in the creek where she wove the branches into a dome around her, I notice the creek outside my window, and the giant pine tree with its long branches in the front field creating a hidden away space, a “sojourner sanctuary”, at its trunk. I ask the Lord to help me shed off all my sophisticated encumbrances and develop a love so strong that I would become a “sojourner” too.; willing to go wherever he sends, testify of all that he has done, and live in communion with Him, less from my head and more from my heart.
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What part of Sojourner’s story most speaks to you?