The Daily Miracle

In my previous life I spent eight years working for the Rockford Register Star, the daily newspaper in Illinois’ second largest city, at least at that time. If you’ve never been around a newspaper operation, you need to take a tour sometime. And you’d better do it soon before newspapers go the way of the dinosaur. 

I worked in classified advertising as a mild-mannered sales rep. If you wanted to hawk your collection of Beanie Babies, host a neighborhood garage sale, hire an Industrial Engineer, haul trash or hold an auction, I was your guy to call. All it took was entering your information into the system, setting up the publish dates and charging you an arm and a leg for it. 

But it took someone else to “dump” the ads. I didn’t coin that term, that’s just what they called it. Every night someone had to make sure that everything entered into the system actually came out ready to print. Kind of like eating a burrito. 

Then that person hands off the ads to someone else who begins to lay out the pages together with ads, news, obituaries, stocks, weather maps, comics, crosswords and box scores. It goes from there eventually to the press room, where the press operators set everything in motion and the magic happens.

In the meantime, there’s a whole graphic design department creating retail, real estate, automotive advertisements and more. There’s a whole team of sales professionals out showing specs and making deals. There are journalists frantically gathering and writing stories, researchers digging for information, editors proofing and creating headlines, photographers capturing newsworthy moments and editorial cartoonists humoring readers with their latest satires.

And that’s not even getting the paper out of the building. It takes an array of people to truck the papers out to the carriers, who in turn throw yours into the bushes rather than on your doorstep. Then it takes a whole army of employees in the circulation department to field your calls complaining about why your paper ended up in the bushes.

Then there’s marketing, human resources, finance and billing, administrative assistants, information tech geeks – I mean, gurus, building maintenance and cleaning people, somebody to keep the coffee fresh, and so on.  

No wonder they call it the daily miracle. Every department is dependent upon every other department. Everybody realizes this. Without working together well, that newspaper would never end up in your bushes an hour late every morning. 

Unity is essential not only in the newspaper business, but in the church as well. What do you see happen in the Bible after Jesus rises from the dead? You see the church working together. They’re dependent on each other and they know it. Reading in the book of Acts you see the church united in Christ and united with one another. 

“All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer…And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship…Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul…” (Acts 1:14; 2:42; 4:32).

This is God’s design for His body, the church. This is Jesus’ plea for His followers. This is the Holy Spirit’s work in the lives of believers. Unity. Devotion. Togetherness. Teamwork. Fellowship. Being one in spirit and purpose.

“There is one body and one Spirit – just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call – one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:4-6). 

Why not come and be part of the daily miracle that is called the church?