The Chief Who Loved to Read

“How can I understand, unless someone guides me?” — from Acts 8

While his arm healed, David got to know Robert Moffat’s daughter Mary, who had grown up in Africa. They were married on 9 January 1845. Soon they moved to the town of a chief named Sechele, who had asked David to come.

Sechele, the chief of the Bakwena, was about David’s age. David wrote that Sechele learned the alphabet on the very first day! Soon he was reading the Bible, and his favourite book was Isaiah. Isaiah, he said, was a fine man who knew how to speak.

Sechele asked hard questions. When he heard that God would one day judge the world, he said, “You startle me: these words make all my bones to shake.” Then he asked why nobody had come sooner to tell his people, because his own forefathers had died without ever hearing about Jesus.

Sechele even offered to send his headmen with whips to make all his people believe! David said no. Nobody can be forced to believe in Jesus.

In those days the missionaries would not baptise a man with more than one wife, and Sechele, like other chiefs, had several. It was very hard, but he kept only his first wife and sent the others home with new clothes and their own belongings. He was baptised on 1 October 1848. A few months later Sechele did wrong, and David sadly told him he could no longer share the Lord’s Supper.

But Sechele did not give up on God. For the rest of his life he read the Bible, prayed, and taught his people about Jesus. In 1852 armed men attacked his people and burned his town. Sechele set out to ask Queen Victoria for help. When none came, he built his town again and became a powerful chief. Many of the Bakwena became Christians because of him.

Sechele was a real hero of faith. Everybody does wrong sometimes. But God does not give up on us, and we do not have to give up on him.

Dear God, thank you for giving me your word to read. When I do wrong, help me to come back to you, and to keep following you all my life, like Sechele. Amen.