In January 1742, while her husband Jonathan Edwards was away preaching, Sarah Edwards experienced a spiritual awakening that would become one of the most remarkable accounts of the First Great Awakening.
The Spiritual Encounter Begins
It began on Wednesday morning, January 20, 1742. A visiting minister was preaching in Northampton, and Sarah found herself overwhelmed by a sense of God's presence that would continue for more than two weeks.
"I felt an entire resignation to the will of God, with respect to health and sickness, ease and pain," she later dictated to her husband. She described "an overwhelming sense of the glory of the work of redemption" and "an extraordinary sense of the awful majesty, greatness and holiness of God."
Intense Physical and Spiritual Manifestations
The experiences were so intense they affected her physically. At times she was unable to speak or stand. Sometimes she would leap involuntarily in praise. Other times she collapsed, completely overwhelmed by what she described as "the light and joy of the love of God."
Jonathan Edwards Validates the Experience
When Jonathan returned home, he was elated to learn of his wife's encounters with the divine. Though a careful theologian suspicious of emotional excess, he recognized something genuine in Sarah's experience. He asked her to dictate the entire account, which he later published (without naming her) in his work defending the revival.
Jonathan wrote that Sarah was "overwhelmed in the light and joy of the love of God" and considered her to be "the model of a truly Spirit-filled person." Her experience became a touchstone for understanding authentic revival - spiritual encounters that produce lasting fruit of holiness, humility, and love.
A Model for Great Awakening Revival
Sarah Edwards, mother of eleven children and wife to America's greatest theologian, demonstrated that the deepest spiritual experiences were available not just to preachers but to those who quietly sought God in their ordinary lives.
