History is replete with attempts to find solutions to pressing problems: The search for a land of milk and honey, the Fountain of Youth, and a vaccine for COVID-19 are examples.
Many pursuits have been successful, like vaccines for polio, smallpox, and hepatitis, and the ability to fly from a few hundred feet to the moon and beyond. Life expectancy in the last two centuries has more than doubled. In the United States, it has gone from less than 30 to 77. This doubling is also true around the world.
So much has been done, but there is so much more to do. We honor bridge builders, healers, and dreamers—those who aspire to do great things and get them done. Their failure rate is usually very high, but they pick themselves back up and try again. They are relentless.
Hebrews 11 honors those who had dreams inspired by God and by faith, persistently pursued them. “By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out unto a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for he looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Hebrews 11:8-10). Let’s also aspire.
—Larry Smith