The Least Of These - Isabella Graham

1742–1814

Jesus once told a brilliant parable about Judgment Day, in which the Son of Man rewards or condemns people for their treatment of him when he was sick, in prison, or needing food, drink, or clothing. On both sides, everyone is puzzled. When did we ever see you in such need? The answer has sounded through the centuries: “When you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!” (Matthew 25:40).

Isabella Graham was one of many Christians who have taken that challenge seriously. She grew up in Scotland, joined the church as a teenager, and married a doctor. An army physician, her husband died from an illness about a decade later, and Isabella found herself a widow and a single mom in her early thirties.

It’s not unusual to see Christians in dire circumstances reaching out to help others. Graham certainly did—not only teaching school, but also starting a sort of health-insurance union for the poor (the Penny Society). Then she got a visit from an old friend.

John Witherspoon had been the minister of her childhood church. (You might recognize his name because he became a leader in America and signed the Declaration of Independence.) Now in 1785, he was visiting Scotland again, and he convinced Isabella Graham to come to the United States.

There she attained a whole new level of charitable work, founding (or cofounding) organizations to help widows, orphans, the poor, and the mentally disabled. Graham started a Sunday school in New York (at a time when that concept was brand new), as well as a missionary society. She was involved in charities that ministered to prostitutes, visited inmates, and distributed Bibles.

She lived into her seventies, pouring out her life for the needy, in service to God. “The Lord has convinced me that I have nothing in myself on which I can rest,” she wrote to a friend, “. . . but this Saviour is provided for sinners. . . . I rest my salvation on his word; God giveth to me eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”

Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.

James 1:27