Samuel Ringgold Ward was born into slavery in 1817 on Maryland's eastern shore but fled as a child with his parents in 1820 to New Jersey and soon relocated to New York in 1826. Once settled, Ward's parents enrolled him in at the African Free School. After he left school, Samuel Ward worked as a teacher and developed a keen interest in abolition. In his early 20s, in May 1839, he became licensed to preach the gospel by the New York Congregational Association, assembled at Poughkeepsie. However, in November of the same year, he was appointed the travelling agent of first the American Anti-slavery Society and afterwards the New York Anti-slavery Society, and it was not until 1841 that he first became a pastor. In April of that year he accepted the unanimous invitation of the Congregational Church of South Butler, Wayne Co., New York, to be their pastor; and in September of that year was publicly ordained as its minister (later, in 1853, Butler Congregational Church, appointed Antoinette Louisa Brown - the first woman to be ordained in the USA).
Rev. Samuel Ringgold Ward, remained for several years, the pastor of an all white congregation in Courtlandville, N.Y., of the Congregational persuasion, and editor of an excellent newspaper, devoted to the religious elevation of that denomination. Mr. Ward is a man of great talents, his fame is widespread as an orator and man of learning, and needs no encomium from us.
Samuel Ward said; "there are many attempts to get up compromises and there is no term which I detest more than this, it is always the term which makes right yield to wrong; it has always been accursed since Eve made the first compromise with the devil. Such crisis leave us the right of Revolution and if need be the right we will, at whatever cost, most sacredly maintain." "My father and I talked very freely of his death. He had always maintained that a Christian ought to have his preparation for his departure made and completed in Christ, before death, so as when death should come he should have not to do BUT TO DIE. That my father said, is enough to do at once."
In his autobiography of a fugitive slave, Rev. Ward expressed his sentiments of how God created him; "I have often been called a nigger, and some have tried to make me believe it; and the only consolation that has been offered me for being called nigger was that when I die and go to heaven, I shall be white. But if I cannot go to heaven as black as God made me, let me go down to hell and dwell with the devil forever."
Rev. Ward did not have a problem with the color of his skin nor a problem with who he was born to be. Many of us struggle with who we are. We want long hair. we want straight hair, I'd rather be light, I'd rather be dark, I want to be skinny, I want to be tall. But we should praise God for how dreadfully-distinguished we all are. Can you imagine in your church everyone looking the same? We tend to have this insecurity all the time about our make up. But while you were being made in secret, hidden in your mothers womb, God already formed who you would be. How tall or how small, how light and how dark. Many in the church carry a spirit of covetouesness because they either want what someone else has or to be like someone else. Learn how to praise God and be satisfied with you. I am who God made me! You were carefully put together let nothing change God's intricate design for you. God is constantly thinking about you and now that you know that it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, because "I am who God made me to Be!"
This is a great post. I also agree that it is God's will to make us each unique and in his own image. Because God made no mistakes in forming us in our mommy's womb, we should learn to be content in who we are. Yes, we can improve ourselves physically by exercising or getting a wax job, but what we have on the inside of us is more important that what's on the outside, like the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
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