Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Sunday, February 19, 2017
FREEDOM "SHAREHOLDERS"
FREEDOM "SHAREHOLDERS"
There are many forms of ministry that avail themselves to blessedly loving persons. Many forms, I say.
Just now, I am reading of how a Quaker, Levi Coffin of Cincinnati went about his charitable labor of collecting contributions from fellow merchants with "stock in the Underground Railroad," as they termed it, with which to supply the needs of, then forward onwards desperate, daring, needy fugitive slaves to family freedom in Canada in the 1840s, my heart rejoices!
As he recounts his encounters with those merchants, some whom he just barely knows, including those who are less than well disposed, but whom his powerful example and testimony still convicts, then secretly converts into contributing "shareholders," I cannot help but feel that this man was doing the Lord's work! Indeed that very work to which he was specially born.
How blessed are we who know and do that ministry to which we were born, for which we are called to do.
I am reading REMINISCENCES OF LEVI COFFIN, edited and abridged by Ben Richmond (2006), 219-223