AwakeningEsimerkki

"Nothing Important Happened Today" On an unseasonably mild midsummer day in the typically hot and humid Philadelphia, July 4, 1776, the United States Declaration of Independence was finalized and adopted by fifty-six men and was soon signed and distributed throughout the colonies. John Adams had convinced the Continental Congress, then at war with Great Britain, to allow the young Thomas Jefferson to compose the initial document formally explaining their choice of independence from Great Britain. Also on that day, across the Atlantic Ocean, legend has it that King George III of England wrote in his diary: “Nothing important happened today.” Nothing important happened?! This was perhaps one of the greatest understatements in world history. On that day, American rebels forged the Declaration of Independence, and although it took seven more years until the Americans fully reached independence from England, the writing of the Declaration was the beginning of the end of England’s reign over America. The king assumed nothing important had taken place on that day because he hadn’t heard of it yet. He didn’t live in a day and age of tweets and texts and camera phones and search engines. His was a day of smoke signals. It is my fear for the western church today that, on the coattails of King George III, we make generalizations and assumptions about the fate of our Christian faith in this day and age that are just plain wrong. Christianity is thriving around the world today! There is a sense of revival on many fronts, but most of us haven’t heard of it yet, and so we write on the subconscious journal in the recesses of our minds: “Nothing important is happening today.” And we ask ourselves: Is this all there is? It is as if we think we have a cap on what God is doing around the world today. The reality is that God is on the move. And when we hear the stories, they encourage and lift our faith just like this Scripture says, “In the middle of our trouble and hard times here, just knowing how you’re doing keeps us going. Knowing that your faith is alive keeps us alive.” (1 Thessalonians 3:8)