Love, Faith, and Joy
If any one thing defined the life of Harriet Ross Tubman it was her love for her fellow human being. And her love was truly unconditional.
Faced with what was on the surface an insurmountable human challenge, this humble woman with no formal education, no inherited or accumulated wealth, managed to accomplish in her extraordinary life exceptional deeds.
What manner of human being faced with the cruelty of slavery, the physical and mental treatment and indignities that her fellow man and woman could muster against her and her people, could somehow rise to accomplish what few in history have ever dared.
Yet, in spite of the cruelty she witnessed, she never hated the abuser. She knew in her heart that it would be God that would determine the plight of those that struck her or spat upon her. Harriet Tubman, true to her fervent faith in the Goodness of God had only love in her heart for those that chose to abuse her and her people. It was the joy she felt, not in the accumulation of riches or wealth, for she never had any measurable material wealth.
But as Frederick Douglass so eloquently stated, the joy for Harriet Ross Tubman came from, "a few trembling, scarred, and foot-sore bondmen and women, whom you haveled out of the house of bondage, and whose heartfelt 'God bless you' has been your only reward."
For each and every day of her life and whether or not she could hear the footsteps of the bounty hunter gaining on her for the $40,000 reward on her head, Harriet Ross Tubman knew nothing but love, faith and joy.