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It's
nothing new to say that the world we live in is messed up – but
that's the problem.
We
wish or perhaps even dare to believe that life could be a fairy tale
for anyone if they just have the right perspective – but every day
the truth grows less and less flexible, and with every perspective
added it takes form piece by piece into exactly the hard, cold,
unfeeling lump of rock we first took it to be.
The truth is not always pretty.
The
arts and the media reflect the current feelings of the human race.
They abound with sorrow, superficiality, anger, elusive portrayals of
justice, and pride going hand-in-hand with hollow egos. Some have
merely resigned to the darkness and embraced it, deciding to milk
what fun they can out of life in spite of its horrors before
resigning themselves to fate. Perhaps it's all they believe they can
do.
What
manner of world is it? A place where broken families are the norm,
disease and pain are commonplace, relationships are fun but short,
where the weak always fall prey to the stronger or smarter with or
without morals, and violence and killing happen somewhere every day.
The damage is mountainous and often irreparable. Under it all we
sense something is very wrong. Deep within us we hear a voice that is
often stifled but is ever constant, which finds its way into our
wording, “This is not the way it's supposed to be.”
No,
this is not the way it's supposed to be.
Even though we are told to
shut up, accept it, and make the best of it, we are still left with
that cold feeling. What we do to amuse ourselves, all that we indulge
in to drown our sorrows, it minimizes the pain but it never heals.
Beneath it all we want that peace. We want to find the light that
shines in the darkness – but the only light we find is a
will-o-the-wisp, gone even as we reach for it.
I
won't accept it. I will not resign myself to the notion that the
darkness is all there really is. And you know something? I don't have
to.
Nothing
I believe can change the harsh realities – but with Jesus in the
picture, I can make sense of them.
What
was it that drove them?
What was it that made the early Christians
sing and find joy in spite of imprisonment and torture?
What caused
them to hold to the name of Jesus even to the point of painful death?
It was hope.
Not a blind hope, not wishful thinking – but the
conviction that Jesus rose from the dead, conquering death, showing
that life was not as lost a cause as the world seemed to think, not
with him. In him they found an eternal family. With him they saw
justice, and also forgiveness. To him the wicked and the oppressor
would ultimately answer for their crimes. In his light, the darkness
of the world seemed like merely a shadow before dawn – it became
the superficial thing, having lost all its power to control and
convince them, for it was doomed to disappear, to be replaced by a
new heaven and earth – a world no longer messed up, but where
everything will be made right again.
Is
broken the way our world is supposed to be? No. Does it have the
final say? Not on your life. In the light of Jesus, its threats become
empty. It can inflict pain and take away our comfort, but it can
never command us again. It is dead.
The life in Christ is the only
reality now that matters.
Many
have claimed to find peace and happiness through one means or another
– but only Jesus went through the ultimate sorrow and torture,
crossed to the other side, then came back to show us that he is
indeed life itself, giving us assurance beyond doubt that it could be
found. Darkness, struggle, and death are ever present in this world –
but for those who believe, it's lost its sting. We have been freed.
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