God's Activity in the Lives of Mary Rowlandson and Ben Franklin

Introduction: Recognizing God's Hand in Everyday Life

How many people search for evidence of God's activity in their lives and never find it? Yet in the lives of Mary Rowlandson and Benjamin Franklin, both figures recognized the working of the Almighty in their everyday circumstances. Perhaps they did not look for God to prove himself to them; instead, they simply acknowledged that God is always at work. Perhaps it was their colonial upbringing — which emphasized that God is active in the lives of his children — that taught them to see the hand of God in ordinary situations.

What can be said with a measure of certainty is that neither of them held a predetermined list of what they expected God to do for them. Franklin recognized God's hand in protection and providential care throughout a lifetime that grew from one success to the next. Rowlandson acknowledged God's hand in the hardships that became her life after being taken captive by Native Americans from a colonial settlement. In both cases, Mary and Ben did not select their circumstances as the measure of God's provision. Rather, their trust in his care allowed them to see that God is always at work in the lives of his children.

Mary Rowlandson: Faith Amid Captivity and Slaughter

Mary Rowlandson lived during the colonial period in a frontier settlement — a community of 37 people who applied their wills and labor to the task of carving a new life from the forest. But colonial settlements were not safe places. As colonists pushed into Native American lands, conflict was frequent and brutal. One afternoon, a tribe attacked Mary's home, and in a tragic assault, 24 of the 37 settlers were carried away as captives; nearly all the rest were killed.

In such circumstances, many who waver in their faith cry out, "Where is God? Why did he allow this to happen?" But Mary's reflections centered on how God protected the survivors and gave comfort to the living and the dying alike. One mother, having witnessed her children murdered, cried that she could not live without them. Mary recorded what happened next:

"My eldest sister being yet in the house, and seeing those woeful sights, the infidels hauling mothers one way, and children another, and some wallowing in their blood: and her elder son telling her that her son William was dead, and myself was wounded, she said, 'And Lord, let me die with them,' which was no sooner said, but she was struck with a bullet, and fell down dead over the threshold."

Where was God during this calamity? According to Mary, he was right beside them — protecting them from an agony greater than they could endure, even if that protection came through death.

How does a person find a God who protects through death? The question is not how to find the Almighty, but how to find a faith that trusts God regardless of what enters a life. Of the final outcome of the raid, Mary recorded these faith-filled words:

"The Indians laid hold of us, pulling me one way, and the children another, and said, 'Come go along with us'; I told them they would kill me: they answered, if I was willing to go along with them, they would not hurt me. Oh the doleful sight that now was to behold at this house! 'Come; behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he has made in the earth.' Of thirty-seven persons who were in this one house, none escaped either present death, or a bitter captivity, save only one."

Even in despair, Mary identified the works of the Almighty as protecting those who remained alive and allowing those who died to find a better resting place than the hardships of colonial frontier life.

The Comfort of Scripture in Suffering

Mary's accounts show how difficult it was to watch friends and family stripped and torn as sheep set upon by wolves. Her faith did not insulate her from terror or personal grief, but she continued to recognize that God was able to deliver them and to protect those who remained alive until eventual deliverance came. Such is the outlook of a faith-filled heart.

As she was carried across the countryside as a captive, Rowlandson wrote: "Now that comfortable Scripture presented itself to me, 'For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee' (Isaiah 54:7). Thus the Lord carried me along from one time to another, and made good to me this precious promise, and many others." It was not the circumstances to which Mary looked for evidence of God, but to God himself — and she trusted that he would never leave or forsake her.

Benjamin Franklin: Providence in Prosperity

Benjamin Franklin also lived a life in which he recognized God's hand at work around him. His circumstances were the opposite of Mary's: he was raised in a prosperous family, lived at the centers of commerce and education, and became part of the political and intellectual culture that shaped the new nation. In his success, Ben also looked to God as the source and provider of his blessings. In Part One of his autobiography, he wrote:

"And now I speak of thanking God, I desire with all humility to acknowledge that I owe the mentioned happiness of my past life to His kind providence, which lead me to the means I used and gave them success. My belief of this induces me to hope..."

God was not limited by the circumstances around Franklin; but Ben recognized that he could limit God's actions in his own life through his own choices. He continued in the same passage:

"I must not presume that the same goodness will still be exercised toward me, in continuing that happiness, or enabling me to bear a fatal reverse, which I may experience as others have done. The complexion of my future fortune being known to Him only in whose power it is to bless to us even our afflictions."

For Franklin, God's blessing was not defined by favorable circumstances alone. He recognized that God could bless him equally in prosperity or in affliction.

Conclusion: Living Worthy of Divine Grace

It was each person's responsibility to live up to the grace of God which had acted in their lives, rather than demand that God's grace conform to human expectations. By faith, both Mary Rowlandson and Benjamin Franklin recognized that God had entered human existence and set the example of a life worth living. By faith, they found the evidence of that gift and chose to live lives they believed were worthy of the grace they had already received.

Their stories, separated by vastly different circumstances, arrive at the same conclusion: faith is not a lens for interpreting favorable outcomes alone, but a way of seeing that makes divine presence visible in all of life's conditions — in captivity and in freedom, in suffering and in success. The colonial worldview that shaped both writers encouraged them to trust first and interpret second, and that ordering made all the difference in what they were able to perceive and record.