Threads

The history of Christianity is full of spiritual threads.  One of the most well known spiritual threads started in 1874 when a Sunday School teacher named Edward Kimball went to the shoe store where one of the 17 year old boys in his class worked.  It is because of this Sunday School teacher that Dwight L. Moody was converted.  As we know, Moody became one of the greatest evangelists in American history.  It is said that millions heard him preach and he established The Moody Bible Institute. 

The thread continued as J. Wilbur Chapman was converted at one of Moody's meetings.  Chapman became an evangelist and a professional baseball player was converted at a Chapman meeting. When Chapman went to another ministry, the ball player named Billy Sunday picked up the evangelist's mantle.  At one of Billy Sunday's meetings a man named Mordecai Ham was converted and became an evangelist.  The next person in this spiritual thread is known to most of us.  It was at a Mordecai Ham meeting that Billy Graham was converted.  Graham often spoke of Moody as the model for his great crusades at which so many people came to Christ. 

Each one of us is a part of some spiritual thread which has spun its way through the ages to us.  Some of us may know the names of the saints who stretch behind us and whose faithfulness has reached through the generations to include us.  As amazing as this is to consider, what is even more amazing is that you and I are a part of a thread which is spinning its way forward to touch the lives of those unseen and, perhaps, even unborn.  God is truly amazing!  Who would have thought we could be a part of a plan as big as His?