Just let me serve.
In January 1864 a baby boy was born to Mary and Giles a pair of slaves owned by Moses and Susan Carver in Diamond Missouri. Three weeks after his birth his mother, sister, and he were kidnapped by slave raiders from Arkansas. Moses Carver sent people to find them but only baby George was retrieved. George was a sickly child and was never required to work in the fields. Upon the death of his father after the Civil War Moses and Susan Carver raised George and his older brother James as their own children. Because they were not allowed to go to the schools of the area Susan Carver taught them to read and write herself. George went to high school 10 miles away where he did receive a diploma, allowing him to be enrolled in the Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. There he pursued a degree in art and music, loving to paint and having a knack of drawing botanical samples. He was encouraged to change his major to agriculture, and did so receiving his bachelor degree , then he went on and received his master’s degree in 1896 in horticulture and mycology.
After his Master’s Degree he became a teacher at the Simpson College until he was approached by Booker T. Washington and ask if he would come and teach at the Tuskegee Institute. When he got to the Tuskegee Institute he found there was no scientific lab for him to teach in, and no funds to furnish one. So he went to local junkyard and bought pots pans bottles and jars, everything he could get his hands on and made a laboratory from where he could teach. During his illustrious career at the Tuskegee Institute, his focus was to improve the status of the farms in the South. Cotton had depleted the soils, and between that and the bole weevil, the cotton market was on the decline. He taught the farmers that peanuts, sweet potatoes and soybeans were alternative crops that would enrich instead deplete the soil.
From peanuts George would invent over 300 products, such as dyes, plastics, gasoline, milk, cosmetics, medicinal oils, (used in the treatment of polio by Franklin Delano Roosevelt), soap, ink, and wood stains to name a few. He also invented 118 products from sweet potatoes such as: molasses, postage stamp glue, flour, vinegar, synthetic rubber, and another form of gasoline.
Carver wrote about his faith, and he testified about it on many occasions stating that: his faith in Jesus was the only mechanism by which he could effectively pursue the art of science. He wrote of his conversion in a letter to Isabel Coleman in 1931. In this letter he stated that he was hardly 10 years old and God came into his heart one afternoon while he was shelling corn. This happened after his little friend told him about Sunday school and what they did there. After learning he prayed a simple prayer asking Jesus to come into his heart and kept the faith ever since.
Carver viewed faith in Jesus Christ as a means of destroying both barriers of racial disharmony and social stratification. He made a list of eight cardinal virtues for his students to strive toward:
Be clean both inside and out
Neither look up to the rich nor down on the poor.
Lose, if need be, without squealing.
Win without bragging.
Always be considerate of women, children, and older people.
Be too brave to lie.
Be too generous to cheat.
Take your share of the world, and let others take theirs.
Beginning in 1906 at Tuskegee, Carver led a Bible class on Sundays for several students at their request.
Carver toured the world speaking to universities and institutes of science, giving talks on botany and agriculture. He advised Theodore Roosevelt concerning agriculture, he also advised Mahatma Gandhi on the same subject.
These are some of his famous quotes:
Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.
99% of failures come from people who have a habit of making excuses.
I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only listen.
He is also known for saying: someday I will leave this world, and I want to leave it knowing I was a service to others. At 78 years old he fell down the stairs at his home and died. He was buried at Tuskegee Institute next to Booker T. Washington and his epitaph reads: he could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world.
About now you’re asking yourself why I brought up George Washington Carver at all. For two reasons, one, he was born in a time of oppression and never used it as an excuse to hold him back from doing anything, especially knowing Jesus Christ is the Savior and keeping him as a focal point in his life. The second reason is because his main ambition in life was to serve others, make things better in the world he knew, he did this without adding to his own fame, and he was known as a kindhearted generous man.
As parents it is important for us to teach our children but the world does not orbit around them. The sun does not rise for their pleasure neither does the moon. We need to teach them to be kindhearted, and to keep Christ as the center of their life. We need to teach them to remain humble, for from humility strength is formed.
We as authors could learn a lesson or two from George Washington Carver. His awards and accolades would make this blog 10 pages long, but he found no value in fame. He was a simple man who wanted to make life better for those around him, and spent his life achieving that goal. Some of his friends were Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Theodore Roosevelt, but to him these were common people. He was born in adversity but did not use that as an excuse not to achieve his life dreams.
And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
Genesis 3:12-13
And Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord wax hot: thou knowest the people, that they are set on mischief. For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us: for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.
Exodus 32:22-24
Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.
Romans 2:1
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
I John 1:8