The Scar the World Forgot

On May 8, 1980, the Thirty-Third World Health Assembly declared in Geneva what no generation before had dared believe: smallpox — a disease that killed an estimated 300 million people in the twentieth century alone — was eradicated from the earth.

That declaration was no single moment of triumph. It capped 184 years of perseverance that began when Edward Jenner vaccinated eight-year-old James Phipps in Berkeley, England, in 1796. The decisive push came in 1967, when Dr. Donald A. Henderson led the WHO's intensified campaign into thirty-one countries where the virus still raged. Health workers traveled by foot, boat, and camel — village to village, sometimes through civil wars — to vaccinate and trace every last case. The final natural infection struck Ali Maow Maalin, a hospital cook in Merka, Somalia, in October 1977. He survived. Three years of global surveillance confirmed the victory.

The Psalmist writes, "Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits — who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases" (Psalm 103:2-3). Tucked inside that blessing is a warning: we are prone to forget. The generation that never bore the smallpox scar may never know what was overcome on their behalf.

Perseverance in faith works the same way. The prayers you pray today, the battles you fight against sin and sorrow, may bear fruit your children take for granted. Press on. The Healer who sustained nearly two centuries of effort against one disease has not grown weary of the work He is doing in you.