Freedom Worth the Final Mile

In September 1849, Harriet Tubman fled Dorchester County, Maryland, traveling nearly ninety miles on foot through swamps and forests to reach Pennsylvania. She was free — but not for long. When Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act in September 1850, federal marshals gained authority to capture escaped slaves even in free states and return them to bondage. Freedom in Philadelphia was no longer safe.

So Tubman did something extraordinary. Beginning in late 1850, she returned to Maryland's Eastern Shore again and again, leading groups of fugitives not merely to Pennsylvania but all the way to St. Catharines, Ontario — across the Canadian border, beyond the reach of any American law. Over the next decade, she made approximately thirteen rescue missions, guiding around seventy people to complete freedom. Thomas Garrett, the Wilmington, Delaware station master who sheltered many of her groups, later testified she never lost a single passenger.

Tubman understood what the Apostle Paul declares in Galatians 5:1: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." Half-freedom is not freedom at all. A liberty that can be revoked by the next law, the next compromise, the next moment of fear is no liberty worth claiming.

The same is true in the life of faith. Christ does not offer partial deliverance — freedom from guilt on Sundays but slavery to shame on Mondays. He leads us all the way. The question for every believer is whether we will settle halfway or press on to the fullness He has purchased for us.