THE PEANUT MAN
by Pastor Lem Niere
George Washington Carver (ca. 1864-1943) was an African-American man of humble origins. Je built a successful career as a botanist and inventor. He began each day with a prayer, asking God to reveal secrets to him about plants and vegetables. The story is told that he once prayed, “Mr. Creator, what was the universe made for?” And God replied, “You want to know too much.” When Carver asked, “Mr. Creator, what is the peanut for?” God supposedly said, “That’s more like it.”
Carter discovered more than three hundred uses for the peanut, including various kinds of foods, oil, paint, ink, soup, shampoo, including flour, starch, and synthetic rubber. He was a world-class expert in botany and agriculture, and many sought his advice, including Mahatma Gandhi and Joseph Stalin. Thomas Edison and Henry Ford invited him to work for them. But Carver preferred to remain in his own laboratory—which he called “God’s little workshop at Tuskegee Institute (later named Tuskegee University) in Alabama.
To think that this humble man could have become substantially wealthy by patenting his discoveries, but no, he instead decided to leave them unpatented so that poor people could make the products he discovered without paying royalties.
George Washington Carver left us an example of altruistic service. The epitaph on his grave on the Tuskegee University campus says: “He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world.”
What a good motivation this is for our own lives. The Bible says “a good name is to be chosen rather than great riches” (Proverbs 22:1). The unselfish examples of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), of Dorcas, and of George Washington Carver should not remain as monuments of the past to merely be admired. They should motivate us to overcome our self-centred tendencies and live unselfish lives for the sake of humanity and for God!
Each time you munch on a peanut-butter sandwich; take a bite on a peanut brittle or peanut butter cookies, or salted peanuts (my favourite), just remember the Peanut Man, George Washington Carver and his great contribution to humanity.
One of Carver’s famous quotes is this: “Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough!”
