Every year I have my students read about Harriet Tubman and every year I am shocked at the number of my eighth graders who have never heard of her, who don’t know her story, how she was an escaped slave, a conductor on the Underground Railroad, how she personally helped free hundreds of slaves by escorting them to the north and to Canada.
One part of Harriet’s story that was glossed over when I was a child and still receives little attention I think in public schools today, is the spiritual element to her story. Yes, she was called Moses because like Moses she helped free her people.
But also, like Moses, Harriet Tubman had an ongoing dialogue with God.
Yesterday in the book store, I came across a picture book on the life of Harriet Tubman, entitled Moses. It is a Caldecott Honor book and a Coretta Scott King Award winner and it emphasizes in a way that is touching and moving Harriet Tubman’s relationship with God. It imagines her dialogue with Him.
It shows how when she first escaped, God directed her to this person and to that person for help, how God provided her instructions for fleeing from the dogs that hunted her, how He protected her and watched over while she slept.
And then how when she finally made it to freedom, He asked her to turn around, go back south, grab her family and do it all over again. Nineteen times, Harriet Tubman made the journey with slaves fleeing from the south to the north.
Nineteen times.
Harriet Tubman escapes, finds her freedom after years of beatings and near starvation and just when she knows everything will be all right, God tells her to go back and do it again and again and again.
It would have only been human to be afraid. And she was many times, I’m sure, but what kept her going was her faith in God and her willingness to be used for His good.
Nineteen times, nearly three hundred people and Harriet Tubman never lost one of them on the journey.
At the end of Moses, author Carole Boston Weatherford, imagines Harriet’s response to those who sing her praises. She writes Harriet Tubman’s response as this “It wasn’t me. It was the Lord. I always trust Him to lead me and He always does.”
There have been times in my life and will be times in my life when that sort of clarity will elude me, when I’ll get too comfortable with the status quo, when I’ll get too lost in the blessings that God has provided and forget that He has plans for me.
I hope then I can think of Harriet Tubman and remember that God uses blessings and strife to propel us on the journey and that to get caught up in either means that we have lost sight of the path.
When we do lose sight of that path, we need to just give it over to God and trust in Him as Harriet Tubman trusted in Him to use us, to make use of us, for His greater good.
