Harriet Tubman

Prayer takes many forms. “Flash Prayers” are brief, sentence prayers that can be offered to God throughout the day. “Lord, help this person,” “God, open their eyes” and “Thank you, Lord” are but a few examples.
Harriet Tubman (1822-1913) centered her life on a single, flash prayer. You may not know much about her now, but her portrait will soon appear on twenty-dollar bills in years to come. Harriet was born a slave and endured harsh treatment on a Maryland plantation. Sometime in early adolescence, Jesus became her confidante and constant companion. In 1849, she learned that she and her siblings were about to be sold to another cruel master. She had the palpable sense that God was directing her and her brothers to attempt a daring escape. They set out late on a Saturday night, but her two brothers became afraid and returned to the plantation. Harriet pressed on alone, following the North Star by night and hiding in potato fields by day, all the while offering up a single flash prayer. Thanks to the Underground Railroad, she found her way to freedom in the north. She became a domestic worker yet felt God’s prompting again, this time to become a “conductor” for the Underground Railroad. Her biographer estimates the number of runaway slaves she guided to freedom as three hundred. She led thirteen rescue operations in the south and earned the nickname “Moses.” She became so resented by enslavers that they placed a forty-thousand-dollar bounty on her head. During the Civil War, she dressed as an old woman to spy for the north and nursed wounded African American soldiers. Her remarkable life would explain her picture on American currency. Why not carry her flash prayer with you today: