“Your Promised Land life . . . is there for the taking. Expect to be challenged. The enemy won’t go down without a fight. But expect great progress. . . Breakthroughs outnumber breakdowns.”- Max Lucado, Glory Days
“Not a word failed of any good thing which the Lord had spoken to the house of Israel. All came to pass.”- Joshua 21:45 (NKJV)
The Chicago World’s Fair, better known as A Century of Progress International Exposition, opened on May 27, 1933. My father, who had turned twelve just eleven days earlier, undoubtedly was fascinated with all the science and technology on display. Dad lived close enough to the fair to have been a frequent visitor. A three-inch thick scrapbook of newspaper clippings and postcards, which dad titled “A Century of Progress, 1933, chronicled his experiences there for a lifetime. This linen postcard of the Havoline Thermometer was part of his collection.
The Havoline Thermometer contained 3,000 feet of neon tubing, ten miles of wiring, and sixty tons of steel. It stood 218 feet tall (21 stories) and could be seen from many sections of the 427 acre fairgrounds. The numerals were ten feet tall.
The motto of A Century of Progress was “Science finds, industry applies, man conforms.” Fair organizers and corporate leaders believed that progress rides the tide of technological innovation and consumerism. But when the exposition closed after a successful two-year run and the Havoline Thermometer was only a memory, the Great Depression remained. A promising future, however, cannot be dependent on finite knowledge and material goods. Pericles once wrote:
“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”
Max Lucado writes in Glory Days that our Promised Land is “not real estate but a real state of the heart and mind.” To shift your focus from the wilderness to the Promised Land, remember what God has done and remember whose you are. Because your inheritance is in Christ, you already have the victory. You live our of your inheritance, not your circumstance.
Exposition patrons stood at the crossroads of recession and optimism. Max Lucado observes that Promised Land people also risk a choice:
“When forced to stand at the crossroads of faith and unbelief, they choose belief. They place one determined step after another on the pathway of faith. Seldom with a skip, usually with a limp. They make a conscious effort to step toward God, to lean into hope, to heed the call of heaven. They press into the promises of God.”
“Science finds, industry applies, man conforms.” “…our Promised Land is “not real estate but a real state of the heart and mind.” …You live out of your inheritance, not your circumstance.”
I think we often view the ways of the world as inevitable; if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. But there is always a choice, and the choices that bring life are often not the ways of the world.
Thanks for sharing this, David.