November 3 | Moments Almanac | Boxcar

Welcome to Moments Almanac as we remember the people, places, and events that leave fingerprints on the soul. Today is November 3rd, and I'm so glad you're here with me today. There are some people who spend their lives trying to escape what happened to them. And then there are people who take what happened to them and make certain somebody else doesn't have to experience it. On November 3rd, two remarkable women died 26 years apart. One became famous around the world. The other is probably unknown to most people outside Atlanta, but both of them knew what it was like to be a child without much security. Carrie Steele was born enslaved in Georgia in 1829. She was orphaned while still a child. We know very little about those early years. There's no birth certificate. We don't even know the names of her parents. But somehow, while enslaved, Carrie learned to read and write. After emancipation, she eventually found work with a railroad, serving as a maid in the Atlanta's Union Station, and there she began noticing children, children with nowhere to go, homeless children wandering around the station and the streets nearby. Some had apparently been abandoned there. Carrie knew something about being alone. So she did what she could. She received permission from the railroad to let children stay in an empty boxcar during the day. Yes, before there was an orphanage there was a boxcar. While Carrie worked, the children had somewhere relatively safe to stay, and she could check on them. But then the work day ended, and Carrie couldn't simply leave them there, so she took them in. Her little two bedroom house began filling with children who had no house of their own. Eventually there were too many, so Carrie did what she could. She wrote a small account of her life and sold copies to raise money. She asked the community for help, and then she did something extraordinary. She sold her own home. The woman who had once been an orphan gave up her house so that other orphans could have one. In eighteen eighty eight, the Carrie Steele Orphan Home was chartered. A few years later, a three-story brick building stood on four acres in Atlanta, providing shelter, education, Christian instruction, and practical training for children who might otherwise have been left on the streets. The institution she began still exists today as the Carrie Steele Pitts Home. Across its history, it's cared for more than twenty thousand children. Carrie Steele Logan died on November third, nineteen hundred. She was seventy one. Twenty-six years later, on November third, another woman died, whose childhood had also been marked by poverty and instability. Her name was Annie Oakley. Long before she became one of the most famous sharpshooters in the world, Annie was Phoebe Anne Moses, a little girl growing up in rural Ohio. Her father died when she was young, her family fell into desperate poverty. While still a child, Annie spent time at the Drake County Infirmary, essentially the County Poorhouse, and she later was sent to work for her family who treated her terribly. Eventually she escaped. She learned to shoot partly because her family needed food, and that little girl from the poor house became Annie Oakley. She performed before enormous crowds. She traveled internationally. She became one of the highest paying performers in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. But apparently she remembered where she came from. Annie helped support members of her extended family and gave money to charities serving orphans. She never founded an orphanage. She never sheltered children in a boxcar. She simply used what she had. Which brings us back to Carrie Steele Logan. If you visit Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, you can find her grave. And carved into the stone are these words The mother of orphans, she hath done what she could. That last sentence comes from the King James Version of Mark 14. Jesus said it about a woman who poured expensive perfume over him. People around criticized her for what she had done. Jesus defended her. She has done what she could. I love that sentence because Jesus didn't say she solved everything. He didn't say she changed the whole world. He didn't say she had unlimited resources. He simply said she did what she could. Carrie Steele Logan could not rescue every orphan in Atlanta, but she had a boxcar, then she had a house, and then she had an idea, and then she had the courage to sell the house. So she did what she could. Annie Oakley could not erase the poverty of her own childhood. But when success finally came, she could remember the children who were still where she had once had been. So she did what she could. And I think that's a challenge that we all should accept. We spend an awful lot of time thinking about what we cannot do. We don't have enough money, we don't have enough influence, we don't have enough time, we don't have enough ability. The problem is too large, the need is too great. And all of that may be true, but perhaps Jesus isn't asking for what we cannot do. Perhaps he's asking for what we can. Who can you forgive? Who can you welcome? What can you give? What little corners of this broken world are within reach of your hands today? Carrie Steele Logan started with a boxcar, and more than a century later, children are still being helped because she decided to do what she could. And that's not a bad epitaph. Actually, I can't think of a better one. She hath done what she could. May the same someday be said of us. And that's Moments Almanac for November 3rd. I hope you'll join me tomorrow. Until then, take heart. Notice the scattered moments, and share the grace.