Susanna Wesley
1669-1742 18th century
Prayer held amid domestic noise, a space kept for God when nothing is quiet.
Who was Susanna Wesley?
The mother of nineteen children in an often impoverished English rectory, she taught her brood herself and set aside a daily time for prayer, sitting with her apron drawn over her face to signal that she was not to be disturbed. From this discipline came John and Charles Wesley; she has been called the 'mother of Methodism'.
In their own words
Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, or takes away your relish for spiritual things, that to you is sin.
Religion is not to be confined to the church or closet, nor exercised only in prayer and meditation.
When she was thirty years of age, or about the year 1700, she formed the resolution to spend an hour morning and evening in private retirement and devotion.