God Brings Change

Jack Eckerd was a businessman from Florida.  He was the founder of the Eckerd Drug chain, the second largest drug chain in America.  One day he saw Charles Colson on the Bill Buckley show talking about restitution and criminal justice.  A few days later, Eckerd contacted Colson asking him to come to Florida to do help him  something about the criminal justice crisis.

With the help of the attorney general of the state, the president of the senate, they traveled around Florida advocating criminal justice reforms.  Every where they went Jack Eckerd would introduce Colson to the crowds and say, "This is Chuck Colson, my friend; I met him on Bill Buckley's TV program.  He's born again.  I'm not.  I wish I were."  And then he'd sit down.  Afterward, they'd get on the airplane and I'd tell him about Jesus.

About a year went by and Colson continued to pester Eckerd about Jesus.  And then one day Eckerd contacted Colson  to tell him that he believed that Jesus was resurrected from the dead.  Colson prayed with Eckerd and he was born again.

The first thing he did was to walk into one of his drugstores and walk through the bookshelves and he saw Playboy and Penthouse.  And he'd seen it there many times before, but it never bothered him before.  Now he saw them with new eyes.

He went back to his office.  He called his president and instructed him to remove Playboy and Penthouse from his stores.  The president said, "You can't mean that, Mr. Eckerd.  We make 3 million dollars a year on those books."  Eckerd replied, "Take 'em out of my stores."  And in 1,700 stores across America, by that one man's decision, those magazines and smut were removed from the shelves becayse a man had given his life to Christ.

We are caught up with this idea that we've got to have big political institutions and big structures and big movements and big organizations in order to change things in our society.  And that's an illusion and a fraud.  Jack Eckerd wrote a letter to all the other drugstore managers; all the other chains, and he said, "I've taken it out of my store.  Why don't you take it out of yours?"  Not a one answered him.  Of course not--he'd put them under conviction.

He wrote them many more letters.  One by one the stores began removing them from their shelves, including over 5,000 7-11 stores.  In the period of 12 months, 11,000 retail outlets in American removed the magazines - not because someone passed a law, but because God wouldn't let one of his men off the hook.  THAT is what brings change.