The Engine That Never Turned

In 1928, a farmer outside Topeka, Kansas, purchased a brand-new John Deere tractor — the finest machine money could buy. He parked it in his barn, covered it with a canvas tarp, and told every neighbor who visited about its horsepower, its reliability, its revolutionary design. He could recite the specifications from memory. He defended its superiority in every conversation at the general store. But that tractor never once touched soil. It never pulled a plow, never turned a furrow, never brought in a single harvest. Within a decade, the engine seized from disuse. Rust claimed the chassis. Mice nested in the seat cushions. The finest tractor in the county rotted into scrap — not because it was broken, but because it was never used.

James understood something that farmer missed. "Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." The Greek word James uses — nekra — doesn't mean weak or sleeping. It means a corpse. A lifeless thing.

Genuine faith is an engine designed for work. It feeds the hungry neighbor on your street. It sits with the grieving widow at her kitchen table. It writes the check, makes the visit, speaks the difficult truth in love. Faith that only talks about what it believes while the world starves for mercy is no more useful than a tractor rusting in a barn.

The Almighty never intended our faith to be admired under a tarp. He designed it to break ground.