Why This Beautiful Ugly Depressing World Needs Christmas Hope

What a Wonderful World!

Know that song?  It’s a hit song by the late great jazz artist, Louis Armstrong: I see trees of green, red roses too, I see them bloom for me and you, and I think to myself, what a wonderful world….

But is it?  The world, I mean.  Is it really all that wonderful?  After hearing the song by Louis Armstrong, we’re convinced that it is.

This world is bad.  That should be the title for another song.  Maybe it already is.  I don’t know.  What I do know is that, as beautiful as this world is, there is also a lot of pain and suffering going on in the world.  Those of you without a job know what I’m talking about.  Anyone with loved ones battling cancer and other life threatening illnesses, know what I’m talking about.  Those going through painful divorces or have lost close loved ones or have sad broken relationships with parent or child or sibling or significant other, know what I’m talking about.  Nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen…words to another song, a Gospel song.  Life is hard.  This has been known since the beginning of time.

Life is hard not only because of broken relationships or life threatening diseases.  It’s hard because we must survive the harsh realities of nature.  We are vulnerable.  We have basic necessities: food, water, and shelter, to begin with.  However, except maybe for the homeless person, our high-tech modern city lifestyle has removed us several steps from the immediate challenge of survival, challenges that our ancestors dealt with daily in order to survive: If the men didn’t hunt, there would be no dinner, if the women didn’t carry buckets from the well or stream, there’d be no water.  If the children didn’t milk the cows, till the ground, gather wild berries, there’d be no milk, no fruits and vegetables.

Living in the cities as most of us now do, we’ve forgotten our dependency on Mother Nature.  Few of us have a clue as to how to survive in the wilderness.  We have supermarkets and warehouses, locomotives and tractor-trailers that supply us.  We don’t think of nature.  We don’t think of nature’s cycles.  We don’t think of the earth’s thin crust or the sky’s thin ozone layer or the interconnectedness between trees, plants, water, weather, climate, and life sustainability.  We should.  It’s a matter of survival.  Mother Nature can be very harsh and unforgiving at times; we must nurture nature, take care of what she gives us.

Silly humans we are.  We are our worst enemies.  We cut off our nose to spite our face.  We will ruin this earth.  We have and we are.  For example, global warming is a reality and its prognosis is not good.  Yet the international community, including the U.S., can’t agree on a collective and unified approach to protect us from its inevitable consequences.  We see our water-wells closed and sealed-off, wherever there is heavy duty fracking and drilling going-on, and we call it a financial boon for the economy.  We see industrial pollution of our air and water ways leading to global warming and we call it a natural cycle of nature.  We see the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and we call it Fair Trade.

We humans can be cruel and unjust.  We are greedy and selfish.  We are quick to fight and kill.  We are haughty and presumptuous.  We are short-sighted, self-destructive, and indulgent.  We can be mean, insensitive, uncaring, cold-hearted, and belligerent.  To be bad is cool.  To be cold and hard is hot.  To succeed at the expense of others is smart.  To win by beating others down is admirable.

This is why we need Christmas.

“Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son.  And they shall call his name Immanuel, which means, ‘God with us’” (Matthew 1:23).

We need a Savior.

“Today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11).

This Christmas season think of the contrast.  All the pain and suffering, all the heart-ache and agony, the loneliness and sorrow, and ask, where is God.

God’s answer is Jesus: I AM the bread of life.  I AM the light.  I AM the Good Shepherd.  I AM the resurrection and the Life.  I AM the way, the truth, and the life.  Jesus, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, was born, lived, died, was raised from the dead.

Someday there will be an accounting and all will answer to God.  We will finally have what we’ve so longed for, a world without war, a world of peace, justice, righteousness, and glory.

Until then, keep the faith, turn to Jesus, and hold on to His promise.

Jesus Saves!