Sojourner Truth and the Body That Belonged to God

In 1826, Isabella Baumfree walked away from the Dumont estate in Ulster County, New York, carrying her infant daughter and nothing else. She had been sold five times before her thirteenth birthday. Every slaveholder who claimed ownership of her body treated it as property to be used, loaned, and discarded.

But something shifted when she encountered the living Christ. Years later, standing before a crowd in Akron, Ohio, she rolled up her sleeve and flexed an arm hardened by decades of labor. She had plowed fields, hauled water, and borne the lash. Men had treated her body as a commodity. But she declared that this same body now belonged to Someone else entirely — and this Owner had paid a price no auction block could match.

She took the name Sojourner Truth because she understood: a body redeemed is a body repurposed. She walked thousands of miles preaching liberation, not because her body was finally her own, but because it finally belonged to the right Master.

Paul told the Corinthians the same stunning truth: "You are not your own; you were bought at a price." Every previous owner of Sojourner's body had degraded it. But when the Almighty claimed her, that same body became a temple — a place where glory dwelled and holy work began. The question is never whether someone owns you. The question is who.