The Detour That Changed Everything
Mary McLeod Bethune spent years preparing to be a missionary to Africa. Then the mission board sent a letter saying there was no place for her. She called it the greatest disappointment of her life. She had no idea that closed door was about to change a nation.
The Letter That Said No
Born in 1875 on a South Carolina cotton field, the fifteenth of seventeen children of former slaves, Mary hungered to learn. She walked miles to a mission school and taught her siblings everything she learned. Education carried her to a Bible institute in Chicago and one dream: Africa. When the door closed, she refused to grow bitter. If Africa was shut, her mission field would be the American South.
A School Built on $1.50
In October 1904, in Daytona Beach, Florida, Mary opened a school with a dollar and fifty cents. The children sat on crates, wrote with splinters of charred wood, and used ink she crushed from elderberries. She baked sweet potato pies to pay the bills. Within two years the school had two hundred fifty students. It became the college we know today as Bethune-Cookman.
Trust in the Lord with All Your Heart
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding,” says Proverbs 3:5-6, “and He shall direct your paths.” Mary never reached Africa. She advised presidents and helped write the charter of the United Nations instead. The detour was the destination.
When a door you were sure about slams shut, look around. The path God is pointing you down may be the one that changes everything. And that, friend, is how God lifts up your day.
Keep Looking Up!
Heaven is closer than you think.
May God bless your day.
Pastor Rodney
Related devotionals: Amy Carmichael — the prayer God answered with no · Jeremiah Lanphier — the man who prayed alone · Where Heaven Came Down
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