Impossible

How many times do we want to give up because the journey seems father or higher than anything other journey we have ever experienced?  I know I am tempted often to just say, “too hard, too much, too far, too impossible…. and yet God doesn’t give us permission to give up just because it’s hard.  In fact, in Galatians 9 Paul says, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."

On Saturday my husband and I (and six other folks at that theatre) saw the movie Harriet.  it was intense and powerful and definitely worth seeing, though there were really no light hearted moments.  To say the movie was serious is an understatement.   ("of course, it’s serious, Bart said, using the condescending voice he only uses with his beloved wife, "slavery was a serious awful thing.”)

Harriet Tubman was a young black slave in her twenties who ran to the north for freedom…. risking her life many times.  I won’t tell you more than that, because I don’t want to ruin the movie for you, but she ended up rescuing a lot of slaves in her day utilizing the underground railroad.   Even if you don’t see the movie, reading her life story in a brief online article will inspire you.

There is one scene that will forever stick in my mind.  She had gone back to Maryland several times for members of her family and others to make the 100 mile trip to Philadelphia on foot.  It becomes necessary for them to move even father north to Canada after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 which allowed slave owners to go into the north to catch their slaves who thought they had made it to freedom.   The committee of the underground railroad has a secret meeting in New York and they are about to conclude that they can’t continue to rescue the slaves because they are now so far away.   They are about to make this decision when Harriet, barely five feet tall,  stands and says, “I am not going to stop rescuing slaves because it’s far.   Some of you were born free and others of you have been free so long you have forgotten, but I remember.” 

She then goes on to remind them of what it is like to be a slave.   She ends her speech with more determination than when she started to keep on doing the difficult task to which she felt God had called her — no matter how hard, no matter how far.

What is your impossibility today?    

Our impossible is God’s reality.