The rule of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, commenced with the execution of Charles I and proceeded throughout the middle of the seventeenth century with a merciless agenda to divest the country of any vestige of the monarchy. The Anglicans were targeted in the aftermath of the English Civil War, as they were seen as partners in crime with the Royals. They were so closely tied to the monarchy that the king himself had served as the head of the church. Cromwell’s army emptied the monasteries, removed baptismal fonts from the churches, and defrocked the clergy in an attempt to render the Church of England powerless within the country. It was not a good time to be an Anglican minister. Yet, in spite of the trouble and targeting, some Anglicans remained undaunted. An inscription hidden away in Staunton Harold Church in England reads like this: “In the year 1653 when all things Sacred were throughout ye nation, Either demolisht or profaned, Sir Robert Shirley, Baronet, Founded this church; Whose singular praise it is, to have done the best things in ye worst times, and hoped them in the most callamitous. The righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance.”

Now that is an epitaph we should all covet! Doing the best of things in the worst of times is not only a beautiful thought but also a biblical thought. In writing to the Ephesians, the apostle Paul calls on the saints in that city to redeem the time by doing the will of God, for the days were evil (Eph. 5:15–17). The imperative is that the Ephesian Christians buy up every opportunity presented to them to maximize their effectiveness for God. They were to spend their time in nothing that they needed to say sorry for, in nothing that would not allow them to pray for God’s blessing, and in nothing that would come back to haunt them on their deathbed. And with the imperative there came an impetus. They were to redeem the time because the days were evil; the times demanded a godly use of their time. Paul is calling these believers to swim against the swelling tide of evil that marked the city of Ephesus and the Greek world at large (Eph. 4:17–24; 5:1–14). The days in which they lived were savage and sinful and would get worse (2 Tim. 3:1–13). In the face of this evil, the church desperately needed to inject into the world some compensating goodness. They urgently needed to understand and undertake God’s will on earth, for the days were evil. Paul was saying that the saints at Ephesus were to be good at doing good while people all around them showed how good they were at being bad. In fact, their redeemed and righteous lives were to be an exposé of the corruption of the culture. Their Christian conduct was intended to put to shame the shamelessness of the society in which they lived (Eph. 5:11).

It is easy for us during days of increasing evil to be tempted to throw our hands up in horror and pray, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus!” But that would be a dereliction of duty. Jesus prayed that God would give us strength to remain in the world and exercise a compensating goodness (John 17:15–18). We are to occupy, not hide, until Christ comes (Luke 19:13). Our lives, marriages, work, purity, honesty, neighborliness, and evangelism must constitute spiritual push back. We are not to hide from the evil of our day but to expose it through godly living. Let’s do the best of things in the worst of times!