It’s the 2nd greatest story seldom told. A small community of faith-filled families is harassed, threatened, and surveilled because of their religious beliefs. They feel hunted by their own government and decide to sell everything they own for cents on the dollar. They decide to escape in the middle of the night with their families. They are caught and are in a bigger fix; their leaders are thrown in prison, but they are not deterred. They try again; families are split up and, in a daring escape, they board a ship and pay a fortune to travel to a country they have never been to before nor speak the language. All their chips are cashed in; it’s not merely adults taking a financial risk; it’s everyone in the family, including tender children and infants. The perils facing parentless children at the time were unthinkable.
They decide to boldly move forward, but it’s a one-way ticket… they are fugitives now… they can never return home. Where will they live? They haven’t a clue. It’s reckless behavior for any age, but for some reason they have the courage to push on… all on faith and a glimmer of hope.
They land in their new country; they take jobs no one else wants. Above all they stick together. While they feel safer, they are outcasts here too. Years pass; they feel they’re losing their beliefs, identity, and culture. They look at their children and think of generations yet to come. Everything they believed in is slowly being erased. They strived to preserve their beliefs, but that was hopeless. They needed to escape again, but where and how? Their only speculative solution would be equivalent to blasting off in a spaceship to a new planet with babies in tow. They didn’t need a new place to live; they needed a New World. Traveling to the New World was something daring men did who didn’t have much to lose.
With their money exhausted, they decided to get financing and form a start-up company. They told their “undertakers” they will work for years to come to pay back their travel expenses by hunting furs or anything else for trade. Despite that they knew very little about fur trapping.
They inked a deal to slave away the rest of their lives to pay their debts. They make one bad deal after the next; finally they sell nearly everything they own again and board two rickety old ships. Crossing the Atlantic was extremely dangerous under the best of conditions. After just a few days at sea, one of the two ships springs a devastating leak and the ship and all its passengers are almost dreadfully lost. Prudent and logical parents would have given up and lived a compromised life with safety after such calamity.
But no, these folks were not average people… “they knew they were pilgrims.” But with only one ship, not everyone could go; lifelong friends and fellow believers were to be left behind; many tears were shed. Back on board an overcrowded ship, but not full of sailors but of women, children, and infants who have never been on the high seas. The crew of the ship mocked the passengers who were endlessly seasick and often failed to care for their most basic bodily functions. It was humiliating, debilitating, and terrifying for 66 straight days. The ship, being delayed, set sail from Leiden Sept. 6th just in time for the hurricane season. The winds were so fierce that the center post of the ship split, and if it failed the ship would snap like a toothpick. The crew was overwhelmed; the passengers came up with a quick fix: they used one of their house jacks.
Against the odds they survive the storm; weeks pass, a baby is born, a passenger on board is thrown overboard and is rescued, and some started to think that something divine was at play here. Finally, things start to change; the sea turns a different color, birds start to appear, and one day a crew member yells “Land ho!”
Great news, but there is a problem—they are at the wrong location. The deal was for them to arrive at the Virginia Colony, which ended at the Hudson River (present-day New York). They were 500 miles off course. Because they were under contract to jointly perform duties in the Virginia Colony, that contract was now null and void. Conceivably, each family could have gone its separate way when they hit land. They decided to stick together and they signed a compact to form their own, in essence, form of government. They celebrated their safe arrival, but then it sunk in… it was now November. While looking at the land must have been comforting… that was pretty much all it was good for. With winter approaching, there wasn’t much time to build homes. Most of the living was to be on the now disease-ridden Mayflower.
Just when it looked like their lives were about to change for the better, the real suffering was about to begin. Within 5 days in mid-December 4 people died. Dorothy Bradford falls overboard and sickness starts. Death continued throughout the winter and spring; sickness took men, women, and children. The colony Governor and beloved John Carver likely worked himself to death attempting to build a shelter. Those who didn’t die were often sick. Building homes came to a near halt at the worst of it. 102 passengers boarded the Mayflower; by the summer of 1621, forty-five of them were dead. Death made married couples widows and widowers and children orphans. Each death was the brutal end of a dream which turned into a nightmare. Even those who survived lost their closest friends.
As cold as it might seem, fewer people means fewer things could get done. Yeah, they still were under contract too; their investors were to get all their money back plus a profit regardless of whether people died. Think you have stress in your life? How do you respond when having a minor setback?
It’s hard to compare how we all act now with what they did next.
What did they do when life finally took the misery boot off of their necks, when the dying slowed, and they got to live like peasants in the wilderness? They got together as one big family unit and they did the unbelievable. They gave thanks. If there is a way to prove one’s faith by walking through the valley of the shadow of death and putting a deposit down on building the greatest country in human history, it was paid by these pilgrims. All I can say is thank you so much… we owe you everything. It’s our turn to be courageous and faithful. If you come across someone who isn’t that thankful this November 27th be twice as thankful for them.
