A tale of two worlds

A tale of two worlds at least that is how it seems when you read Hudson Taylor's biography and then look at Britain today. The church in Taylor's day was sending young men out to the mission field by the bucketful - though by 1900 even he began to note more women than men were responding to the call to preach the gospel to the lost.

The story is very different in Britain today. When you study British history I want to tentatively suggest one reason why that may be the case: We are too worldly. In the 1950's couples and the British in general aspired to a comfortable lifestyle after the austerity of the post war years. This aspiration has continued being the norm for the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed with relatively few glitches along the way it has been the defining characteristic of the last 50 years in Britain and has morphed from from an aspiration to comfort into a desire to be wealthy. Indeed what we now consider as comfortable our parents or grandparents in the 1950's would consider opulent and lavish.

Consumerism has gone through the roof, advertising has given birth to a rapacious desire, we now live in a competitive society based not on your skills or ability but on what you have or can purchase. We find this hard to see in ourselves but the place where it may be most easily discerned is in what we desire for our children, nieces, nephews or grandchildren. We want them to have a comfortable life, to pursue a career or degree, to be happy.

We do not want them to risk everything by going to the mission field to face danger and possibly death. We do not live life by faith dependent on God and we are not sure our nerves could take it if our children were to.

Yet the call of the cross is to live that way. The contrast with Hudson Taylor's day is striking and it should make us repentant before God. It must drive us to prayer that God would change us and the church around us.

Millions are lost and facing a Christ less and Godless eternity in hell yet we content ourselves with the baubles of the world, with working for next years eBay-ables. May God change my hard heart, give us a passion for the lost and help us nail this idol to the cross.