A Moment With Sarah Edwards

Sarah Edwards

On Wednesday January 27, 1742 Sarah Edward's (wife of Jonathan) had an experience with God that transformed her. After hearing a lecture by Samuel Buell she felt so moved by God that she felt like "her bodily strength was overcome". For three hours she talked with people and felt consumed with joy and thankfulness.

The next morning she was still feeling the effects of the experience. She had a hard time completing her daily tasks due to her excitement. During another message by Buell she fell out of her chair onto the floor. When people helped put her in a chair she shared passionately with them about God's kindness in redeeming her from Hell.

During a hymn she leaped spontaneously out of her chair feeling like she was ascending into heaven. Later she went to the ground again, and was taken to a place to lie down. While in bed she continued to "contemplate the glories of the heavenly world". She felt "wholly indifferent" to worldly cares and personal ambition. For more than four hours she was so overcome with joy and love that she could not even sit up in bed. Sarah called it "the sweetest night I ever had in my life".

Jonathan said that this experience caused her to "have a great aversion to judging other professing Christians" (Now THAT is a experience all of us could benefit from) and her sense of the glory of The Holy Spirit overwhelmed her both in soul and body. He also said, “If such things are enthusiasm, and the fruits of a distempered brain, let my brain be evermore possessed of that happy distemper!  If this be distraction, I pray God that the world of mankind may be all seized with this benign, meek, beneficent, beatifical, glorious distraction!”