She Kept Going Back

In the autumn of 1850, the United States Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, making it a federal crime to aid escaped slaves even in free states. Harriet Tubman had only just tasted freedom herself, having fled Dorchester County, Maryland, for Philadelphia the year before. The new law meant nowhere in America was truly safe. Most fugitives pushed north to Canada and never looked back.

Tubman went back.

Over the next decade, she made approximately thirteen rescue missions into slave-holding territory, guiding roughly seventy people — including her own aging parents — along the Underground Railroad's network of safe houses from Maryland's Eastern Shore through Delaware and Pennsylvania, all the way to St. Catharines, Ontario. She traveled by night, navigating by the North Star, and never lost a single person in her care. "I never ran my train off the track," she later said.

Isaiah 61:1 declares that the Anointed One comes "to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners." Tubman lived that verse in flesh and bone. But notice — the prophet does not say freedom falls from the sky. Someone must go and proclaim it. Someone must walk back into the darkness to lead others out.

The Gospel works the same way. Christ left glory to enter our bondage. And those He sets free, He sends back — not to remain in comfort, but to bring others home.