We’re Staying

In the 1940s, a man named Clarence Jordan started a farm in Americus, Georgia — an intentional community where poor whites and poor blacks would live and work together. In the Deep South of that era, this was not a popular idea.

For fourteen years, the surrounding community tried to shut him down. Boycotts. Slashed tires. Intimidation of every kind. Finally, in 1954, the Ku Klux Klan came out one night with guns and torches and burned every building on the farm to the ground — except Clarence's house, which they riddled with bullets.

The next morning a reporter arrived to cover the story. He found Clarence in the field, hoeing and planting in the scorched earth. The reporter pressed him, trying to get a reaction. Finally he said, with barely concealed contempt: "Dr. Jordan, you've got two PhDs and you've been fourteen years into this farm — and there's nothing left of it at all. Just how successful do you think you've been?"

Clarence kept hoeing. Then he said: "About as successful as the cross. Sir, I don't think you understand us. We are not called to be successful — just faithful. We're staying."

We are not called to be successful. Just faithful.

Years later, that farm became the birthplace of Habitat for Humanity. It is still operating today. But Clarence didn't know that when he was hoeing in the ashes. He was just being faithful to the next thing in front of him.

The cross looked like failure too. It wasn't.

Prayer: Holy God, free us from our obsession with results and success. Teach us the deeper faithfulness of those who keep hoeing and planting even when everything around them has been reduced to ash. Remind us that you have a way of bringing life out of exactly those places. We're staying. Amen.

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