Black History: Gift of Remembrance

After a long two-year hiatus, I just recently, finally returned to in-person worship at church. Honestly, the whole sequence was filled with mixed emotions and high anxiety. Taking a page from Frederick Douglas’s remarkable autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, I also deeply struggle “between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ.” There is a yearning for a replay of childhood episodes that had me sitting on the front pew at church, as a little girl who was probably swaying slightly offbeat, while joining the adults in singing Aretha Franklin’s version of “How I Got Over.”  The choir would enthusiastically march into the sanctuary with precision and everyone sang so beautifully, I recall:

And I want to thank him for how he brought me
And I want to thank God for how he taught me
Oh thank my God how he kept me
I’m gonna thank him ’cause he never left me
Then I’m gonna thank God for ‘ole time religion
And I’m gonna thank God for giving me a vision
One day, I’m gonna join the heavenly choir
I’m gonna sing and never get tired.

It would only be much later in life that I began to understand even a morsel of the lyrics’ powerful meaning. The full extent of God’s promises won’t be revealed until eternity comes to pass, I now know. That’s the harsh, tension-laced truth that Scripture explains, and Christians embrace. The Kingdom of God is both already and not yet.

Now with four decades of life behind me, no longer pintsize and sporting pigtails and barrettes that flew everywhere at their leisure, I am increasingly led to pay homage to the rich examples of faith I observed in church as a young girl each week back in the day. The matriarchs along my sojourn were unsung, but no less influential or devout than those whose names history commemorates. These women taught me not only about how the Israelites made it over and crossed the Red Sea, but they modeled an incomparable determination to obediently steward their own gifts of exhortation, leadership, evangelism, teaching, and preaching. Often unheralded pillars of the Black church tradition, these Black women and Black Baptist women at that were missionaries, nurses, prayer warriors, Sunday School superintendents, mothers to abandoned children, and perfectors of the art of ushering, with boundless dignity it seemed, plainly spreading the Good News of Jesus wherever they found themselves. Plus, they had a limitless supply of the best candies the world has ever known, always at-the-ready in their purse, in addition to a good pinch if you needed help paying attention.

Though born in the Palmetto State and proud of a southern accent that still lingers all these years later, my story hasn’t been nearly as predictable or homogenous as some of my peers. A lot has changed since my dedication to Christ, as a bawling baby at Springfield Baptist Church, only to eventually spend several years in Texas. I went on to live on the East Coast, which led to getting engaged, now celebrating marriage to my husband 15 years later. It is interesting how God continues to mark our sojourn together with common and unique variables. Even so, no matter where the call of God takes us, one place remains as familiar as the sound of my mother’s voice: the church. It has its issues, Lord knows. But I always feel at-home and affirmed in the house of God. My adoption as a daughter of the King makes space for me, even when others exclude or disinvite me. I remain grateful for space provided at Holy Communion where, with the breaking of wafers and guzzling of grape juice, everyone in Christ can remember what has been done on our behalf, yes, while also being emboldened with the hope of Jesus’ triumphant return.

I have worshipped in store-front churches and concert-type venues that hold thousands, historic African American churches, and mainline White churches, and so many other iterations that I have long ago lost track. My Baptist convictions have found harmony with an eclectic canopy of orthodox liturgy, hymns, and spiritual practices. My cup overflows anytime the Doxology is sung at the end of service. Before the pandemic, my husband and I were fortunate to attend a church where over 100 nationalities are represented in the congregation. What a beautiful foretaste of heaven, as people of all nations, tongues, and tribes raise their hands to praise the Lord our God?

Even when life gets hard—and it does get hard, really hard—my soul reflects on God’s goodness. I know what He has done for me and continues to do. Because of Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension, I am a recipient of salvation’s amazing gift and the ability to live a more abundant life that faces suffering head on. As Christians, we will experience the painful disorientation of life’s dangers, toils, and snares, yet it all offers necessary prompts to remember that we have only gotten this far by faith.

Adapted from my May 2021 post for Baptist Women in Ministry.