A recent newspaper article reported that scientists now
believe they understand the origins of the HIV virus and how it came to the United States. A lot of false rumors have circulated over
the years that they hope to correct.
The best evidence now suggests that the HIV virus jumped
from chimpanzees to humans, possibly when hunters in Africa butchered animals infected with a version of the virus. This virus began to proliferate in Africans
around 1930. Researchers believe they
have 99.8% certainty that the virus moved from Africa to Haiti and then to the United States.
The virus appeared in Haiti around
1966. It may have traveled to Haiti after the
Democratic Republic of Congo won its independence in 1960 and many Haitians
sought work there. There were a lot of
Haitian teachers in the Congo,
and it is probable that some of them brought the virus back home with them.
The HIV virus first appeared in the United States around 1969. Once it got into the U.S. population, Americans traveling to other
countries and people traveling to America allowed it to flow to Europe, Canada,
Latin America, Australia, Japan, and
other parts of the world. The United States
probably served as a worldwide hub for this spread.
The newspaper article concluded by saying that scientists
now believe that HIV arrived in the United States much earlier than was
previously thought. It takes as many as
ten years after infection for most people to get sick, which would have allowed
the virus to spread before health authorities became aware of it. The virus was “underground”, present among
us, and we didn’t even know it.
In Mark 4:1-9, 26-34, Jesus tells some parables about the Kingdom of God being like a person who sows some seeds
in the ground. Some of the seeds do not
grow, some grow briefly, and some grow and produce quite a harvest. But, it doesn’t tell us how long the seeds
are at work underground before any growth appears above ground. How long does it take to put down its root
system, before it can begin to grow up? Does it stay underground ten years like the HIV virus does before it
surfaces?
This raises some interesting questions for our missional
church conversation. If you are a church leader or a ministry leader, how long
will the seeds you are planting in your people remain underground before God
brings them to the surface? Ten
years? More? Less? If you are seeking to plant and spread missional seeds in a
denominational system, how long will they remain underground before their
fruits begin to surface? Ten years? More? Less? If you are seeking to be
missional in the community in which you live, how long will your efforts remain
underground before you begin to see results? Ten years? More? Less?
I believe the missional conversation can have a positive
effect on the western church, but it is not a quick fix. It will not produce an overnight
success. You can’t order it at a fast
food drive-through or cook it quickly in your microwave. And because so much of the growth takes place
underground, we can’t even see it happening. We have to operate by faith. We
have to keep planting, fertilizing, cultivating, and watering, trusting in the
Lord to produce the growth. If the HIV
virus can travel in our bloodstream undetected for ten years before coming to
the surface, perhaps God can get under our skin and work underground for years,
before we begin to see its tangible results.
To what can we compare the kingdom of God? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which,
when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it
is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out
large branches. (Mark 4:30-32).
Clark Cowden
Executive Presbyter
Presbytery of San
Diego
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