Good morning. When I was a 2nd grader, my family moved from Silver Bay, MN to Little Rock, AK. That move provided some considerable culture shock. Soon after we started school in Little Rock I was confronted by a fellow student and a few of his friends. He walked up and asked if it was true that I was a Yankee? I said that I wasn’t sure, which was true because as far as I knew we were Minnesota Twins fans and the thought of being a “Yankee” was a new one for me. The boy called me an unkind name and sneered, asking if it was true that I had moved there from “up north?” I felt pleased that I could now answer his question, and responded that yes indeed, we had just moved there from Minnesota. Then he hit me. I had no idea why, but he gladly filled me in, saying that they didn’t like Yankees.
At that time there were still open wounds from the civil war (and I am talking about the 1960s not the 1860s) and other concerns regarding racial tensions, etc. It was all a bit much for a 7 year-old. One thing I did figure out though, it is always nice to have a friend when someone else wants to be your enemy.
We have a true enemy, the personification of evil, the one who has always led in rebellion against God and who now wants to defame and destroy all persons who live in faith. That enemy has many weapons in his arsenal with which to plague humanity.
Back in 1865 a young Methodist preacher named William Booth had been relocated by his denomination to serve in London. He was taken aback by the poverty he witnessed. He asked, rather loudly, of any who would listen, why there were people who lived under bridges? Why were there people begging in the streets for a scrap of bread? Why were there so many that didn’t seem to have clothing except for the filthy rags they were wearing? He was told that it was all about poverty, which was indeed unfortunate, but simply a fact of life. William Booth refused to accept that such an evil should exist without at least some great effort to confront and defeat it.
William Booth began a work that he called, “The Christian Mission.” It was an effort to address the needs of the impoverished people of the East End region of London. He preached to them about the love of Jesus, and he backed that up with food, clothing, and shelter as it could be arranged. Within a few years the ministry had grown to over 1,000 volunteers. After continued growth, a dozen years later someone mentioned to him that he wasn’t leading a Christian Mission, he was leading an army. And with that, the name Salvation Army came into being. Through all of his life of ministry, William Booth would proclaim that our Lord was always willing to bring the fight to the enemy, and that Christian people should be just as willing to do the same.
It is hard to argue against that point.
Confronting evil, no matter how daunting, is part of the call of Christ to his people. Consider this from Isaiah 58.6-8:
“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousnesswill go before you,
and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
I know that from time to time I take refuge from the commands for compassion by thinking that the job is simply too big, too complicated, too filled with evil, too much for a simple servant to be involved in. But those thoughts are not genuine. We are not commanded to solve the problem. We are commanded to be a part of the solution.
Please consider ways in which taking the fight to the enemy might apply to you. It is a big, bad world with a great many problems. We aren’t commanded to solve every problem, but we are certainly commanded to be a part of solutions.
God bless!
Vern