William Booth's Telegram

In 1901, William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, needed to send a message to rally his workers scattered across Britain. Telegrams charged by the word, and funds were scarce — every penny could feed someone. Booth composed the shortest motivational message in organizational history: a single word.

"Others."

That one word captured everything Booth had learned since walking the gin-soaked streets of East London in the 1860s. He had watched well-dressed churchgoers step over bodies slumped in doorways, then file into pews for Sunday worship. Their hymns were polished, their prayers eloquent, their fasting punctual — and none of it reached the gutter. Booth decided that if his faith could not touch the starving match-factory girls, the homeless veterans sleeping under Blackfriars Bridge, and the women trapped in London's brothels, then his faith was theater.

So the Salvation Army opened shelters, food depots, and employment bureaus. They waded into slums with soup kettles and Scripture. Booth famously declared, "You cannot warm the hearts of people with God's love if they have an empty stomach and cold feet."

This is precisely the worship the Almighty demands in Isaiah 58 — not the performance of piety, but the practice of justice. Loose the chains. Share your bread. Bring the wanderer home. When our fasting moves from ritual to rescue, God promises we will become like a well-watered garden, repairers of broken walls, restorers of streets where people actually live.