DID YOU KNOW THAT?

Ever think about this? Just TRY to imagine it. Your entire life's existence had probably never expanded out beyond a mile or two radius. Born on the plantation, raised on the plantation, live on the plantation, work on the plantation, sleep on the plantation. *Maybe* you've been to town once or twice but if not, the world beyond that fence was a complete mystery to you. You'd no idea. Your mama didn't know. Nor did her's. So much as attempt...ing to escape the plantation would result in unthinkably painful punishments.

Its the deep south. Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama. Maybe a stones throw from the Gulf of Mexico. You risk it. You pick your spot & moment and make a run for it.

Can you begin to imagine this? You escape the plantation --- AND WALK --- to New Jersey!!!

Mostly at night so as to avoid detection. Crossing rivers & lakes clinging to a floating tree branch or other object b/c you've no idea how to swim. Sweltering heat & torrential downpours alike. Plodding through woods and fields and forests filled with bugs, animals, snakes, spiders & all sorts of other creepy crawly things. 1,200 MILES. No promise of making it. And if you're discovered & shipped back,...a fate likely worse than drowning or being bitten by one of those cotton mouths awaits you.

Such is the desire to be free that God placed into the hearts of all men. So powerful is our innate will for liberty, to self-govern, to stand and say, "No one, NO ONE, owns me. I am a free man, do not tread on me", that uneducated, illiterate slaves with no worldly knowledge at all would risk their lives to get to a land they didn't even know existed...had only been told it did...that they would take risks such as these just to find out if such a land did indeed exist. Risk things more horrible than we can begin to image - just to FIND OUT.


MEN INNATELY DESIRE TO BE FREE. Like a dog that can't help but to sniff, its in his nature. We don't even know why. We just do.