05/08/2024
PLOD ON
There is a phrase called "plodding on" first mentioned in the biography of William Carey (1761-1834). Carey was a British minister considered to be the founder of modern missions. Carey was intimately familiar with loss. Within his first year in India, his son died of illness and his wife. Dorothy, experienced a breakdown from which she never recovered. He would eventually bury two wives in his adopted land.
Carey did not witness a decision to follow Christ among those he served until his seventh year in the country. In addition to establishing a college and organizing the Agricultural Society of India, Carey, translated the New Testament into Bengali, published a New Testament in Sanskrit, wrote grammars in Bengali, Sanskrit, and Marathi, translated Indian literature into English, taught as a professor on the subjects of divinity, botany and zoology, and helped establish India's first printing press.
Clearly, Carey spent his day surrounded by a lot of paper -- paper that represented his life‘s blood, work, and tears. Then in March of 1812, much of Carey's labor of love went up in flames when a room at the printing press -- filled with 12,000 reams of stored paper-- caught on fire. Irreplaceable works, including grammars, presses, manuscript, dictionary, and 10 translations of the Bible typeset for printing in 14 languages, were turned to ash. As Carey would write to a friend, "The loss is heavy."
That evening, Carey came to survey the incalculable damage. And then he picked up a pen, and started again.
Imagine.
Later on, Carey said the following: "If after my removal, anyone should think it worth his while to write my life, I will give you a criterion by which you may judge of its correctness. If he gives me credit for being a plodder, he will describe me justly . Anything beyond this will be too much. I can plod. I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe everything."
The call to "plod" sounds less than inspiring. It means "to work steadily and laboriously, or in a stolid, or monotonous fashion, to dredge or toil."
But if we were to p*el back history, and examine the origin stories of some of its greatest inventions, accomplishments, and contributions, we might have more appreciation for this unglamorous gift of plod. We would see Thomas Edison plodding through his oft-quoted "10,000 ways that will not work" on his road to innovation. We would see Nelson Mandela plodding through 27 years in prison before becoming the first black president of South Africa. But above all we would see Jesus was the messiah, plodding his way past, misunderstanding and rejection to and through the cross.
Spiritually, plodding is about moving forward, not by leaps and bounds over tall buildings, but by choices and tears through pain-filled nights.
Plodding is about leaning on God, even when we feel like we’re standing still or falling backward.
In other words, plodding is simply walking.
(As told in “The Night is Normal” - Alicia Britt-Chole)