Today is the anniversary of the death of Mary Slessor in 1915. Brought up in a poor family that had been impoverished by death and her father's resultant drinking, Mary was a child worker in a Dundee jute mill.
Her only escape was her weekly Sunday and church. Unlike the escapes that 21st century life offers, this one inspired her to look to do great things for God. In time, armed with the toughness bred by her story, she was an unlikely lone female arriving in West Africa at a mission station as a nurse. The rest, as they say, is history.
In her home city of Aberdeen, in Dundee, on Scottish bank notes, but especially in Nigeria (as now is) Mary Slessor is recognised as the means of a revolution in the dignity of women and children - and the means of thousands of lives being protected. Her fiery, Christ-inspired anger at the killing of mothers of the stillborn, of twins, of the mothers of twins, transformed a society.
Her appointment as the first female British magistrate in any territory advanced the value and dignity of women the world over.
And, as we almost tire of pointing out, this was and is best achieved, by grasping - as Mary did - the Creator's dignity of his creation and the power of God to change a society by the agency of godly (not religious) people serving him and others.
As Mary wrote to one of her prayer partners,
"I have always said that I have no idea how or why God has carried me over so many funny and hard places, and made these hordes of people submit to me, or why the Government should have given me the privilege of a Magistrate among them, except in answer to prayer made at home for me. It is all beyond my comprehension. The only way I can explain it is on the ground that I have been prayed for more than most. Pray on, the power lies that way."
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