George Washington Carver's 4 A.M. Appointment

Every morning at four o'clock, long before the Alabama sun touched the fields of Tuskegee Institute, George Washington Carver rose and walked into the woods. Born into slavery, his body had once been valued at three hundred dollars — the price of a racehorse. The world had told him his body belonged to someone else.

But Carver knew better. He called those predawn walks his "appointment with the Creator." He would pray with hands open, asking, "Mr. Creator, what do You want me to do today?" And God answered — not in thunderclaps, but through the quiet language of peanut shells, sweet potato vines, and red Alabama clay. From that single body devoted to its Maker, over three hundred products emerged. Carver refused to patent most of them, saying, "God gave them to me. How can I sell them to someone else?"

When wealthy industrialists offered him fortunes, he declined. His body, his mind, his hands — they were not his own. They had been bought at a price far greater than three hundred dollars.

Paul told the Corinthians that their bodies were temples of the Holy Spirit, purchased not with silver but with the blood of Christ. Carver understood this with every early morning step into those woods. He did not merely believe his body belonged to God — he lived as though it did. The question for us is the same one Carver asked each dawn: What does the One who purchased you want to do through you today?