Weak As a Kitten, Strong as a Lion
By Audrey Stallsmith
There were few people in the 19th century who appeared to be as helpless as a female slave—especially a small, sickly, and illiterate female slave. But, although only five feet tall, Harriet Tubman would become a giant in the struggle for abolition. After her own escape, she led so many other slaves to freedom that she would earn the nickname of Moses.
As the movie Harriet details, her chronic disability— perhaps temporal lobe epilepsy—caused her to have frequent headaches, seizures, and daytime sleepiness. It began when, at age 12 or 13, she was hit in the head by a 2-pound weight thrown by an overseer, who actually had aimed that projectile at a different slave.
So her owner actually was trying to sell her during one of the periods when she was at her most ill. He probably should have thought twice about that, because Harriet was praying that her master would change his ways. When that didn’t work, she—in sheer desperation—asked that God kill the man if he wasn’t going to change. But she was appalled when her master actually died about a week after she made her request.
That didn’t help much anyway, since his widow continued with the plans to sell Harriet, which is what impelled her to make her 90-mile dash from slavery in Maryland to freedom in Pennsylvania. I doubt any of her former master’s real sons would have made such strenuous efforts to bring her back as the movie one called Gideon did, though, since a woman in her condition couldn’t have been worth much to him.
So I suspect Gideon actually was supposed to stand for Harriet’s personal demon. The one who emphasized her weakness and worthlessness in an attempt to keep her in bondage by convincing her that God couldn’t care about someone like her. Just like the devil, he could be crushingly cruel one moment and perversely persuasive the next.
But Harriet’s greatest weakness had become her greatest strength. Her condition apparently allowed God to communicate directly with her through visions and dreams, much as He communicated with the Old Testament prophets.
Harriet actually had tried one earlier escape with her brothers—which had been defeated by their insistence on turning back—shortly before her solo run which succeeded. The difference was her being completely committed to the attempt, while her brothers obviously hadn’t been. Like the children of Israel on the difficult journey to the promised land, they apparently had second thoughts along the way. Harriet didn’t.
“I had reasoned this out in my mind,” she reported. “There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.”
Quaker abolitionist Thomas Garrett said of Harriet that "I never met with any person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken direct to her soul." Her experience proves that the Almighty can use our weaknesses as well as our strengths, since those weaknesses open up a channel in our resistance through which the greatest Power in all universes can flow.
If we were all strengths, after all, we would never feel the need to call on Him for help, which many of us have to do on a regular basis. For example, because I am plagued by the kind of forgetfulness that even Memo to Me can’t completely cure, I often have to ask God to remind me of things I need to do or to show me where to find important items I have lost. Those weaknesses cause me to communicate with Him more frequently than I otherwise would think to do.
I also ask for help when I have to deal with things mechanical or technical that I simply don’t understand. “God, please show me what I am doing wrong!” is my cry then. He often does just that, if He knows I’m not simply being lazy. And any communication with God strengthens us spiritually, making us more aware of His presence with us.
As Paul said in II Corinthians 12:10, “When I am weak, then I am strong—the less I have, the more I depend on him.” And Harriet’s openness to God’s guidance didn’t only impact her. It eventually would give her life-changing importance to those with whom she came into contact.
Not only was she “Moses” to 70 or so slaves, she also led the Union raid on the Combahee River, which freed at least 700 more. As she would say herself, “It wasn’t me, It was the Lord! I always told Him, ‘I trust to you. I don’t know where to go or what to do, but I expect You to lead me,’ and He always did.”
Charles Colson points out in The Faith that too many Christians are satisfied with their own salvation. Having reached the promised land themselves, they feel no responsibility for those left behind.
But Tubman, like Colson himself, risked going back to “Egypt” many times over to lead others out as well. Of course, she had the advantage of being able to use a gun to convince some of them to keep going once they had started!
We can’t force other people to want freedom in Christ more than some of them seem to crave bondage, but we can at least care as much as Harriet did that they be given their chance. And we must not let the devil convince us that we are too weak to make any difference, when that weakness often is what allows God to work through us.