1 Cor. 15:58-16:4 - This little snap shot of the life of the first century church in Corinth (1 Cor. 16:1-4), roughly 68 AD, shows one small example of the emergence of a desire to relieve the suffering of others and make a difference in this world. This heart to relieve suffering in the here and now was a bright light against the stark background of the day...when over 50% of the population of the Roman empire were slaves–this was the legacy of noble Greek thought!— and, over of the city of Athen were slaves. Life was cheap, women, children, slaves were all expendable, but those who came to understand that they were loved by God and therefore valuable, were empowered to love others and compelled to make a difference. So hospitals were started, where believers cared for people with deadly diseases, risking their own health, because of love. Schools were begun, so that education could improve the lives of humanity …even in North America, a millennia and a half after the start of Christianity, every one of the founding schools on this continent were begun by Christians, desiring to educate and thereby elevate suffering. And this legacy of hope continues today. Christian aid organizations, like Samaritan's Purse, are the first into many states of emergency, we stay the longest and bring more help than all other agencies combined. Even as much as women's lib may criticize the bible as being paternalistic, they ignore that, had it not been for Christian education, women would still be considered property, little better than a cow, and would remain veiled and oppressed and would never have had access to the education which has allowed them to be emancipated and free. "What we can and must do in the present …is to build for the kingdom. …You are not planting roses in a garden that's about to be dug up for a building site. You are—strange though it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the resurrection itself—accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God's new world. Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one's fellow human beings and for that matter one's fellow nonhuman creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honoured in the world—all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make. That is the logic of the mission of God. God's recreation of his wonderful world, which began with the resurrection of Jesus and continues mysteriously as God's people live in the risen Christ and in the power of his Spirit, means that what we do in Christ and by the Spirit in the present is not wasted. It will last all the way into God's new world. In fact, it will be enhanced there." (N.T. Wright "Surprised By Hope", p.208-209.)
