Progress

¹⁰ Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.                                                     Isaiah 41:10 NLT

As we look into a new year we think of progress. Where does that idea come from, that idea of progress? It comes from the Bible.

Paganism, both ancient and modern, sees life as an endless circle coming from nowhere and going nowhere. Within that circle, only one thing is certain: endless change. But the changes mean nothing. There is no future, only an unpredictable now. As the philosopher has said, “We only learn one thing from history: we don’t learn from history.”

But the Bible tells a different story. In its unique pattern of prediction and fulfillment it calls us to look to a future: things that have never yet occurred. So God promised to an old, childless, landless, refugee couple that if they would leave behind everything that gave them security and would launch out into the unknown, he would give them land and children, and would make them a blessing to the world. That is an invitation, an invitation to look ahead, to dream, to imagine, to trust. And when, against all the odds, that hairy old man and wrinkled old woman held a squalling baby in their arms and laughed and laughed, they knew that with God anything is possible.

That is the vision that shaped our country. The Old World had slipped back into the pagan way of thinking: whatever had been would always be. But when Christian people came to this vast new land, the glory of Biblical thinking could break free. No, just because it had been that way did not mean it had to continue that way. Trusting God, and his promises, let’s try another way, a better way.

Today, losing the Bible much of the progress we babble of goes nowhere. Much of it is change for change’s sake, leading only downward into a deeper slavery to desire. But thank God, we do not need to go there. God is still doing new things. He is appearing in dreams to Muslim people and opening doors from fear to love. He is speaking through the Bible to people in prison and breaking the chains of addiction and self-loathing. Through loving counsel, he is restoring marriages that seemed hopelessly broken. He’s the God of the future, your future. Blessed 2025!