GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 2:4
The Determination of Friends
In 1858, Dwight L. Moody started a Sunday school at North Market Hall in Chicago. He started with a few children, but as the work grew, he organized a fleet of wagons called “Gospel Wagons,” an early equivalent of the church bus, to transport people from all around Chicago to the Sunday school. This was an era before most churches organized their own Sunday schools. Moody, formerly a shoe salesman, organized a corps of volunteers, and the Sunday school eventually attracted hundreds of people.
br> St. Mark told about a group of four men who were determined to bring their sick friend to Jesus. “And because they were not able to bring to him because of the crowd, they uncovered the roof where he was, and after digging through, they lowered the mat where the paralytic was lying. (2:4) The crowd blocked their access to the front door, so they took the stairs to the roof, opened a hole in the roof, and let their friend down in front of Jesus. Missing from this story, of course, is any report of what happened in the room where Jesus was speaking while these men were digging through the roof. A major point in the story, though, is the determination of these four friends to get their friend to Jesus. A similar determination motivated D.L. Moody to bring people to Jesus. That same determination exists in today’s version of the four friends or modern D.L. Moodys.
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