The Gift That Crossed an Ocean Twice

In 1761, a seven-year-old girl arrived in Boston Harbor aboard a slave ship called the Phillis. She was given the ship's name as her own, as though she had no identity beyond the vessel that carried her in chains. Purchased by John and Susanna Wheatley, she was intended for domestic service. But Susanna noticed something remarkable: within sixteen months of arriving in a foreign land, the child had learned to read English. By age fourteen, Phillis Wheatley was writing poetry.

When she assembled a collection of poems, no Boston publisher would print the work of an enslaved African woman. So in 1773, Wheatley sailed to London, crossing the same Atlantic that had once carried her in bondage, where Archibald Bell published Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral with the patronage of Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon. She became the first African American to publish a book of poetry.

Psalm 139:14 declares, "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." The world told Phillis Wheatley she was property. God had made her a poet. Slavery stripped her name, her homeland, her freedom, but it could not strip what the Almighty had woven into her being.

The same truth holds for every believer facing circumstances that deny their worth. No hardship can undo what God has made. Your identity was not assigned by the ship that carried you through suffering. It was authored by the One who formed you. Live as though you believe it, because He does.