Safe

“My grace is enough for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” — from 2 Corinthians 12

In 1903 Mary took two boys, Esien and Effiom, and a girl named Mana to Itu, an old slave market on the river. Mana had once been kidnapped and sold as a slave herself. Mary left the three of them there to teach. Within months more than three hundred people came to a church they had built themselves, and Mana had taught the women of Itu like a mother.

She laid cement floors herself, too. “I just stir it like porridge,” she said, “turn it out, smooth it with a stick, and all the time keep praying, ‘Lord, here’s the cement, if to Thy glory, set it,’ and it has never once gone wrong.”

By now Mary was over sixty, and her boys pushed her through the bush in a basket-chair on wheels. When her church sent no one to a town called Ikpe, she said, “I must go,” and she went. Later she said, “I begin every day, almost every journey in pain, and in such tiredness that I am sure I can’t go on, and whenever I begin, the strength comes, and it increases.”

In January 1915 Mary became very ill. Early in the morning on 13 January, at a place called Use, with the girls she had brought up beside her, she died. People came from all around to mourn Eka kpukpru owo, which means “Everybody’s Mother.” She was buried on the hill above Duke Town, where she had first come ashore thirty-nine years before.

By her grave sat Mammy Fuller, a Jamaican friend from Mary’s first days in Calabar. When some women began to wail, Mammy Fuller stood up. “Do not cry, do not cry,” she said. “Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Ma was a great blessing.” As the coffin was lowered, she said one word: “Safe.”

Mary was never strong. But God gave her strength for each day, and he will do the same for you.

Dear God, thank you for Mary Slessor and all the children she loved. When I feel weak, please give me strength for each day, and keep me safe with you for ever. Amen.