Following the River Home

The French and Indian War of the 1700s is the backdrop to a remarkable story of one pioneer woman’s determination to survive. The French and British were in longstanding tensions over land rights in what is now the United States with the French having established firm allies with a number of native American tribes. Things started coming to a head late 1753 when a young George Washington was sent to warn a garrison of French soldiers at a fort in what is now Pennsylvania that they were occupying land that belonged to Britian. This was followed by the French striking the following spring by taking siege of a British fort in modern day Pittsburgh and burning it to the ground. The war was underway. 

The disposition of the Native Americans toward the European flux of humanity was unwelcoming for many reasons, but the French’s focus on industry like fur trading was experienced by Indian tribes oftentimes as less intrusive than the English agenda of pioneering a new land. This helped shaped the Indian allegiances, seeing the French as business partners and the English as more disruptive to their way of life. In this context, Mary Draper Ingles became a symbol of retaliation for the Indians and a symbol of unconquerable spirit to the family and community who knew her. 

With the progression of war at hand, many settlers may have experienced a false sense of security with lives outside of the direct line of conflict. Mary and her family had established a settlement in southwest Virginia, which was by all accounts removed from the hostilities. July 1755, however, the settlement was attacked by Shawnee warriors who had travelled a long way. They violently murdered a baby girl as well as other residents of Draper’s Meadow, taking Mary and her two sons into captivity, along with her sister-in-law who was seriously wounded. It was harvest-time, and the men were all in the fields bringing in the crops a distance away, so they were not aware of the massacre as it was unfolding.  

These captives of Draper’s Meadow were journeyed a great distance by horse from their Virginia home to near what is now the Cincinnati tri-state area. Mary was eventually separated from her two little boys and her sister-in-law. After several months a slave to the Shawnee, she formed a plan of escape while laboring at Big Bone Lick collecting salt for her captors. Mary’s story is remembered most for her journey home. It was mid-October, and she was headed into the Appalachian Mountains on foot with only a plan to follow by memory the passage taken by the war party who’d stolen her away from her whole life months earlier. They had tracked along rivers from Draper’s Meadow to the Indian settlement along the Ohio River. Mary lacked proper clothing and foot coverings to face the daunting conditions at that time of year, and she was in untamed wilderness among predatory animals, the occasional Indians hunting, and all forms of life-threatening realities. The river wasn’t accommodating. In fact, it was its own danger. She hid. She fled. She starved. She hoped. She followed the river … first the Ohio, then the Kanawha, and finally the New River — more than 800 miles by foot. Mary Draper Ingles arrived back at Draper’s Meadow December 1, 1755, without her children but to the great thrill of her family. 

I share Mary’s story because it is a powerful example of being dragged away to a distant place, she was never meant to be only to find within her what it takes to make it back home. This kind of life experience changes a person forever. 

The apostle Paul has a well-defined profile in the New Testament. He was well-trained in the law, and according to Acts 23:6, Paul states, “My brothers, I am a Pharisee, descended from Pharisees.”i This, coupled with his passionate disposition led to atrocities against God as he persecuted and celebrated the deaths of Christians. He was a terror to believers. He was so relevant to the Kingdom as a destroyer, Jesus dramatically repurposed his relevance to the Kingdom on the road to Damascus, transforming him to a zealous convert, inspired writer, bold and aggressive evangelist, and martyr. Every Christian since Paul’s conversion has built upon his foundation in the faith. Our lives are changed by Paul’s mission on behalf of Christ. 

Luke 23 offers another example of one who was dragged away only to return. We know from Matthew 27 that both thieves crucified with Jesus joined the crowd in heaping insults upon our Savior, yet one ended up confessing faith. What changed in this thief’s dying hours? He owned his guilt when rebuking the other thief crucified with them, saying in Luke 23:40, “Don’t you fear God? … We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve.” In the same verse, the once mocking criminal acknowledges Jesus’s innocence. “But this man has done nothing wrong.” This thief had swayed from angry mocker to suffering believer. He had been brutalized and tortured and set up for a long and agonizing death, yet he heard Jesus in his great suffering pray, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). He watched a severely wounded and tormented man show mercy upon mercy. This thief’s heart was known to Jesus even amid such grave circumstances. When he said to the Savior, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom,” (Luke 23:42), Jesus knew the sincerity of the thief’s belief. For this, he was saved as Jesus declared to him, “Truly, I tell you, today you will be with Me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). 

John the Baptist was born for the purpose of preparing the way of the Lord, according to Isaiah 40:1-5. From the womb, his delight was in the coming of Jesus. John the Baptist was a prophet. “And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for Him, to give His people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins” (Luke 1:76-77). John the Baptist was all of that. He was bold. He was fearless. He preached. He agitated. He rebuked. He sought no comforts. He died for righteousness. His whole life was purposed for Jesus and lived for Jesus, and then he died. Jesus did not come to rescue him even when he called for our Lord to come. His purpose had been fulfilled and with excellence. 

Then there was the sinful woman. This is her label through all of time because this is the extent of how she was identified in Scripture. Whatever her sins, what we know about her is this: She was the one of greater sin in Jesus’s illustration to the shallow-minded Pharisee with whom He dined in Luke 7:43, thus more greatly thankful for her debts forgiven. Lady Surrender, I’ll call her, despite her known sinfulness, could not hold back her repentance and remorse, her love and gratitude, her trust and surrender. She wept so authentically and repentantly, she showered the feet of Jesus with her tears, kissing His feet, washing His feet, pouring her treasure of perfume over them, and drying them with her hair. Again, Jesus knew the condition of her heart, and it was filled with faith that He, the Savior of the world, was capable and willing to rescue even her from her life of sin. Most of all, she wanted to be rescued.  

When we consider Paul, a Pharisee and a Roman Citizen, the thief punished to death alongside Jesus, John the Baptist who came to make a way for Jesus’s mission, and Lady Surrender whose true heart saved her, we are covering such a stratum of humanity in terms of social identity, power and helplessness, purpose and aimlessness. Yet, something they all share is a powerful awareness of authentic humility. Paul, long after he was on his course of preaching the gospel, said of himself, “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners — of whom I am the worst” (1 Timothy 1:15). The thief on the cross had nothing left at the end but what he really believed in his heart, resulting in a humbling encounter with Jesus while crowds jeered. If ever there was someone whose life was defined by Godly purpose, it was John the Baptist, yet he professed, “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie” (Mark 1:7). Finally, there is Lady Surrender, who in complete concession endured ridicule and judgment just for precious access to the feet of Jesus. 

The thing about humility is it isn’t just something we learn about and understand intellectually. It isn’t simply something we attempt to be or pray for. It is a destination. It is an all-consuming place that is inhabited by those who have come to understand the gravity of their sin face to face with the abundance of God’s love and grace. This is a clarity that cannot be then unknown. This is a place where we understand God not only knows our sins but also what brought us to them. When we think of Satan’s commitment to drag us away in sin, this isn’t about Satan playing the long game with hopes of eventually overthrowing God. He and his demons already know they’ve lost. Satan is retaliating against God’s judgment upon him and he weaponizes us for this purpose. We are Mary Draper Ingles with a captor attempting to retaliate headed one direction and home where we belong in the other direction. 

In Mary’s story, they’d sent out search parties for her, yet they could not find her. It took her to come to terms with her circumstances, reject them as a permanent situation, and get herself home, greatly reduced though she was. Changed forever? Absolutely. Yet Mary and her husband were able to begin again and have more children. They were able to start a ferry business across the New River. They were able to recover their son, Thomas, four when kidnapped and seventeen when ransomed and returned to them. We, too, can follow the river. “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city, and his servants will serve Him … they will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever” (Revelation 22:1, 2, 5). This. This is our destination. This is home. How humbling.