Pictured: the bell tower of Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, Houston, Texas.
Americans struggle to appreciate the march of human progress because we are surrounded by it. Driving across this great nation today can seem like an endless line of truck stops and fast food, gas stations and coffee shops, oil wells and 300-foot wind turbines. We sing songs complaining “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” We have progressed so far we no longer appreciate progress.
This is a uniquely modern perspective. Our forebears were surrounded by wilderness and knew death was never more than an infection away. Progress was wholly positive for our ancestors.
Imagine settlers moving into the American colonies. Three families find a spot near a river with high places for houses and fertile land for farming. They dig a well and build three log cabins before winter sets in. Soon a few more families move in and in a year or two, the group builds a larger building that will serve as a school during the week, a church on weekends, and a town hall for political meetings, trials, and more. Eventually they build a bridge or two and an ice house or a hospital. And every step along the way is cause for celebration! This is progress! Our little town is growing! We have carved a little civilization out of the forest. One day a piano teacher moves to town, and maybe an old actor who wants to start a theater, and suddenly we have culture! What had once been a hundred miles of forbidding, endless forest is now interrupted by the lights of a warm, welcoming town. That is progress.
The Bible—particularly the rich pages of the Old Testament—has a lot to say about progress, from infrastructure (including water, sewer, safety, and security), to education, laws, religious practice, and everything necessary to build a new nation. Your work and mine are part of that: we are agents of progress. We BUILD the society. We CONTRIBUTE. God put each one of us here to make a difference, to make an impact.
The ministry of Jesus in Mark chapter five may be the last place you would look for a word about “progress.” But we see it there too. First, Jesus and his disciples are met by a demon-possessed man. Jesus speaks to the demons who identify themselves as “Legion” (“for we are many” Mark 5:9). Jesus casts the demons out of the man and allows them to enter a nearby herd of pigs. Suddenly the 2,000 pigs stampede over the cliff and are drown in the sea—an amazing story, but that is not the point. The point is, Jesus gave this man his life back. He rescued him! The man was suddenly in his right mind, He cleaned up, dressed himself, and was no longer a raving madman living in a graveyard but sat down at peace. Restored. Then he went into the ten cities of the Decapolis and told everyone the Good News about Jesus.
Then Jesus sailed across the sea and was met by Jairus, a synagogue leader, whose daughter was dying. On the way to heal the child, the crowd pressed against Jesus, and Jesus “realized that power had gone out from him” and turned to find out what happened. A woman who had been “bleeding for twelve years” admitted she touched him and had been instantly healed. Jesus told her to go in peace, “your faith has made you well” Mark 5:22-34. Jesus rescued her too. He restored her health, delivering her from the shame of being perpetually unclean according to Leviticus 15:25-30.
Suddenly, a crowd arrived to tell Jairus that his daughter had died. Jesus told him not to listen, that she was only asleep. The crowd laughed: they knew death when they saw it. But Jesus went to the house and raised the child from the dead. “Immediately the girl got up and began to walk … at this they were utterly astounded” Mark 5:35-42.
Jesus did not go about building pipelines or bridges or hospitals or universities. He did something better—he restored broken lives. He rescued the demon-possessed and mentally ill, he healed the sick and unclean, he even restored life to some who had died. If that does not look like progress, we deeply underestimate the value of a single life. One life restored to grace, one mind returned to peaceful sanity, one person rescued from shame … these are accomplishments greater than all the progress being made by all the civil engineers in America.
Building infrastructure is important, critical for any society. But it cannot compare to the value of BUILDING LIVES.
True progress happens when we bless the lives around us, filling them with light and grace and forgiveness, peace and joy and hope for the future.
God, use us to build lives. Show us how to “build others up” according to 1 Thessalonians 5:11. Give us courage and love and the right words. Make us instruments of your progress as we bless others with truth, grace, and hope.
ΑΩ
Household Words: 