John Wesley was born in England in 1703.  When he was six years old, something happened to him that he remembered the rest of his life. You see, his father was an Anglican minister in a small English village. Many people there were offended when his father urged them to lead holy and virtuous lives. Some men in the town even tried to burn the Wesley family house down in the middle of the night! They failed twice.  On the third attempt they succeeded. 

 

John’s father and mother and his seven siblings smelled the smoke and rushed out of the house or climbed out of the windows, but little John was still upstairs, fast asleep.  By the time he woke up, there was no way someone could go back into the house to get him.  But then one man got on another man’s shoulders and pulled John out of the second story bedroom window. Just then the whole roof collapsed in flame. John’s father then said, “Come, neighbors, let us kneel down: let us give thanks to God! He has given me all my eight children: let the house go, I am rich enough.” John Wesley’s personal motto for the rest of his life was, “Is not this a brand plucked out of the burning?”

 

Like his father, John Wesley became an Anglican minister. When he was 32 years old, he decided go as missionary to Georgia which was a new colony of the United States at the time.  Georgia was populated mostly with prisoners who had been transported from England. During John’s long voyage over the Atlantic, a terrific storm blew in over the ocean.  Most of the passengers were frightened and were screaming in panic.   But he noticed one group of German families who were entirely calm and unafraid but in simple faith sang hymns and prayed together. This community, which called themselves Moravians, made a big impact on John Wesley.

 

Wesley returned from Georgia two years later. In many ways, his trip had, been a failure, and he was depressed.  A friend forced him to go to a Moravian meeting for worship one Sunday. Once again the faith and spirituality of this group of people changed his life. He wrote in his diary that: “I felt my heart strangely warmed.” This experience changed the way John Wesley saw his work as a minister. He saw the need for friendship and community within his church. Not only would people within the church meet to talk personally and study the Bible together, but also they would then go out into the towns and cities to build schools, visit prisons, and help the poor and sick.

 

These friendships, centered around faith and doing good things to help others, radically changed both British and American culture for the next two decades.

 

 

 

To close, here is a stanza old Moravian hymn that John Wesley translated into English poetry.

 

In suffering, be thy love my peace;

In weakness, be thy love my power;

And when the storms of life shall cease,

My God! in that transcendent hour,

In death as life be thou my guide,

And bear me through death's whelming tide.