Sunday, September 5
The Lord’s Day
Minute for Mission: Christian Vocation
Painting by Reginald T. Hodges
Maria Fearing was born into slavery in 1838 on a plantation in Gainesville, Alabama, the daughter of a house slave. On hearing her owner tell Bible stories to her own children and speak of the children of Africa who had never heard of Jesus, Maria declared: “I will go to Africa some day if I can.”
That day came nearly a half century later. When she was freed from slavery in 1865, at the age of twenty-seven, she could neither read nor write. However, she found her way to Talledega College, where she completed the ninth grade, then taught in a school nearby. Years later she returned to supervise boarding students. There she met William Sheppard, who had co-founded the American Presbyterian Congo Mission. He had come to Talledega to recruit other African Americans to join him in that mission. At the age of fifty-six, Maria went forward to volunteer. When the church committee rebuffed her application, she sold her little house, collected some money from friends, and went back to the committee, offering to pay her own fare and support herself on the field if she were allowed to travel with Sheppard’s party. Reluctantly, the committee agreed.
Maria’s house in Congo became a haven for young girls in need: orphaned, sickly, abused, enslaved. Eventually her girls gave her the title mama wa mputu, “mother from far away.” For twenty years, Maria continued her work as mother and evangelist, nurturing her girls through warfare and other upheavals, teaching them to be women of faith, grace, stature, and intelligence. Of the first seven converts of the American Presbyterian Congo Mission, three were girls from Maria’s house.
—Darius Leander Swann, president, Maria Fearing Fund for African and African American Partnership in Mission, Inc., Atlanta, Georgia
Prayer
Almighty God, who makes a way out of no way, thank you for the life of your servant, Maria Fearing. Grant to all of us the courage and determination to do your will in spite of circumstances that seem to make it impossible. Amen.
Sunday Lectionary and Hymns
Jer. 18:1–11
Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
PH 345, HB 416
Ps. 139:1–6, 13–18
PPCS 143
O Lord, My Inmost Heart and Thought
HB 129
Philem. 1–21
Help Us Accept Each Other
PH 358
Luke 14:25–33
Take Up Your Cross, the Savior Said
PH 393, HB 293
Prayer
Almighty God, who makes a way out of no way, thank you for the life of your servant, Maria Fearing. Grant to all of us the courage and determination to do your will in spite of circumstances that seem to make it impossible. Amen.
Daily Lectionary
Ps. 103, 150 and Ps. 117, 139
Job 25:1–6; 27:1–6
Rev. 14:1–7, 13; Matt. 5:13–20