Saturday: A Society of Caring
WEEK 40
SATURDAY
A SOCIETY OF CARING
Acts 11:27-30
We are looking at the results of caring. Bishop Alfred Robert Tucker (1849–1914), before he became a bishop in Uganda, was on the way to becoming a great artist. One day he was painting a picture of a poor lost woman, struggling in the street with sleet and wind beating in her face and a little baby at her breast. When he finished the picture, suddenly the thought came to him: “God bless my soul, how can I be so busy with the picture of a lost woman instead of going to preach the gospel to those who are really lost?” From that moment he consecrated himself to bearing his bold and brave witness in the remotest parts of the earth to those who would hear him.* He turned from pictures to persons. Why? He was a Christian, and he cared.
As a student, George Washington Carver (c. 1864–1943) was interested in painting. His teacher at Simpson College said to him, “George, what your people need is improved agriculture.” It was a call. He reluctantly yet resolutely put his artist’s materials in the bottom of a trunk and began to apply himself to agriculture. It is said that he added fifty million dollars to the agriculture of the South. Out of the lowly sweet potato he produced one hundred fifty commercial products; out of the lowly peanut, three hundred commercial products. I said to him, “Dr. Carver, you and I are in the same great business. You’re discovering wonders in peanuts, and I’m discovering wonders in people, both of them wrapped in strange wrappings.” He cared, and because he cared, the world is richer for his living.**
This spirit of caring is the greatest redemptive force that has been loosed upon our planet. It was the natural atmosphere of the amazing new society in the Acts. They cared: for the sick and healed them, for the needy and fed them, for slaves and freed them, for the despised and lifted them, for the sinful and showed them the cross, for women and lifted them to equality with men, for children and set them in the midst of human interest, for the old and cared for them, for enemies and prayed for them, and, when they were hungry, fed them. They cared and therefore conquered, conquered by caring. The future is in the hands of those who care.
O Jesus, your caring is contagious. Your deepest caring, your prayer, “Father, forgive them,” sends us to our knees, gets us at the depths. Help me to care that way. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I belong to the fellowship of all who love, in the service of all who suffer.
* See Arthur P. Shepherd, Tucker of Uganda: Artist and Apostle 1849–1914(London: Student Christian Movement, 1929) at https://www.wdl.org/en/item/9947/, accessed March 18, 2017.
** For more on George Washington Carver, see http://www.tuskegee.edu/about_us/legacy_of_fame/george_w_carver.aspx, accessed March 18, 2017.