The Letter That Called a Wandering Botanist Home

In 1896, George Washington Carver was a quiet graduate student at Iowa State, content to tend his greenhouse experiments in obscurity. He had wandered for years — orphaned as an infant, stolen by Confederate raiders, raised by German immigrants, turned away from one college for the color of his skin. He had no reason to believe anyone of consequence even knew his name.

Then a letter arrived from Booker T. Washington in Tuskegee, Alabama. Washington had been watching Carver's work from hundreds of miles away, tracking his research, noting his gifts. "I cannot offer you money, position, or fame," Washington wrote. "I offer you in their place work — hard, hard work, the task of bringing a people from degradation, poverty, and waste to full manhood."

Carver was stunned. He had been seen — truly seen — by someone he had never met. Not his credentials or his degree, but the particular shape of his calling. Washington recognized what Carver himself had barely dared to name.

This is the astonishment of Nathanael under the fig tree. Before Philip ever spoke his name, before Nathanael had taken a single step toward Galilee, Jesus said, "I saw you." The Almighty does not wait for us to introduce ourselves. He knows the private place where we sit and wrestle and hope. He calls us not for what we have accomplished, but for what He already sees we are becoming.