I’m so thankful for other people who blog amazing things that push me to write.
The other night, I was out on the back porch with 3 of my 4 housemates (yes, I’ve moved), and we got talking about a handful of things like friends, relationships, and politics, and in the midst of our heated discussions and wild bantering, came one of the best conversations I’ve had in a while. We had been discussion politics, and going back and forth about taxes, and the party structure and culture and jobs and gas prices and this and that, and after the hundredth or so solution we came to, we finally hit the realization that (it took way too long to get here), though no matter how hard we try to fix the system, rework the system, do this, do that, what the world really needs is some Jesus.
The last few days have shown me that more and more than I’d like to know. I’ve got friends serving in South Africa, and Ecuador, I’ve got friends and family friends with breast cancer, brain tumors, dying parents and physical ailments, friends with broken relationships, shattered families, abusive surroundings, we live in a world where Jersey Shore, teenage pregnancy, and drug use isn’t just reported on, its glorified, a world where our culture appreciates and boasts of the very things that are tearing it apart.
The reality of our situation is that we have a world on its knees, reeling, struggling to stay afloat. In a country as affluent and privileged as ours, we have way too many homeless, way too many struggling to put food on the table. We have way too many people fighting over their wealth, and no one fighting for those unable to have anything. In a world that has come as far along as ours, we still have people blowing each other up in the middle east, police killing miners in South Africa when they protest for living wages, North Koreans under a military style dictatorship rule, Russians and Belarusians living in fear of the government. For what we claim to be able to do with our technological, our agricultural, our social advances, we have a world in shambles and in ruin.
And today, the same as every other day, its clear that we need Christ to come, to make all things new, to free us from this mess that we have made. Because no matter how hard we fight, no matter how hard we try, we will never be good enough. We will never measure up. We will never fix anything. But, in the midst of this darkness, there is light. In the midst of our messes, our fears, our troubles, our tears there is a God who has overcome it all to bring us life. There is a God who has come to bring us a freedom. There is a God who has come to give us his truths, so that we might live in them. There is a God who came, died, and defeated death so that we might live in his place. And he is ALL we need.
