Where's The Crisis?

I preached this Sunday morning in new song about God's love prevailing, and spent a bit of time talking about the overuse of the term crisis.  I used this graphic from Google Ngram that shows how often the word "crisis" was used in all english publications from 1780-2000.  As you can see, there is a sharp uptick that began about 1960 continuing through today which begs the question, do we have more crises today, or are we wearing out our welcome with this word.

To put forth an argument for wearing out the term, I added some data points to the graph.  This is not to suggest that there are no crises that are happening now, but to say that there is not as substantial an increase in crises as this line would suggest.

Why does this matter?  The point I was making in the sermon is that rather than being on a downhill slide as the graph would suggest, our world is in a state of improvement year over year in everything from public health to education.  While we want to maintain that improvement, we need to realize that in a very real, tangible way, God is moving in the world through his people to make "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" a reality.

Beyond that, I think it underscores our need as individuals and as a church to be cautious about getting sucked into this sensational negativity hole.  We need to be people proclaiming the rule and reign of God. Shouting from the rooftops his incremental victory over unclean drinking water and illiteracy so that people will give this God who cares about our life now a fair hearing.  Maybe, if the church was leading the charge on positivity, people would want to hear more about this life-giving, active God we serve with in the world.