A Good Reminder from Emergency Sex

So much of the media centers around gloom and doom and economic woes, corruption, war, and scores of problems that plague our world. I fear that our 24/7 news outlets resemble more the voyeurism we find on the freeway, where traffic gets backed up due to people not being in a car wreck, rather lines of cars queue up to simply get a look at someone else’s misfortune.

We’re in danger of becoming a cynical culture that peddles more pessimism than hope and now with the latest and greatest technology, this fascination that pockets of humanity has with the fall of other people, can now go viral. My hope is that with all of the current protests going on, whether it’s Wall Street or Greece, whether it’s in the West or the Majority World, people don’t forget to hope, to point to something better, to say at least a few things that remind us of something beautiful.

When Good News and Bad News Lingers

 
On Christmas Eve, I received a note from a friend in Nigeria. The subject line of his email was this: bombs for Christmas. In this note, he describes in detail how he and his family are dealing with the violence all around them. Today, I received another note from a colleague in Asia who is living on a very low salary and cannot see how he will make ends meet. And yet another note from a couple in the Southern United States outlined how the sale of their house fell through and they weren't sure what to do next.

 
My inbox took the wind out of me.
 
 
I recall a section of 'The Stranger' by Albert Camus where we read these words:
 
The Stranger by CamusThe chaplain knew the game well too, I could tell right away: his gaze never faltered. And his voice didn't falter, either, when he said, 'Have you no hope at all? And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?'

'Yes,' I said.
(Part 2, Chapter 5, pg. 117)
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Exporting Credible Hope

Paul Collier, author of the Bottom Billion and of the more recent, The Plundered Planet, uses a phrase entitled 'credible hope' that seems to me to speak directly to the task before many Christian people both inside and outside of the U.S. Now, this is not a critical comment, rather it's simply to retierate that our hope must be indeed credible. And there are two parts then to explore: first, the credibility of our hope and secondly, the certainty of our hope.

Let's initially reflect on the credibility of our hope. In the Bible, Job investigated the credibility of his own hope with these words: 

Job mourning
12 They make night into day: ‘The light,’ they say, ‘is near to the darkness.’
13 If I hope for Sheol as my house, if I make my bed in darkness, 
14 if I say to the pit, ‘You are my father,’ and to the worm, ‘My mother,’ or ‘My sister,’ 
15 where then is my hope? Who will see my hope? 
Job 17:12-15
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Christmas in Review: The God Who Gives a Damn

So much brokeness all around.

Can I begin to understand the new air raids between Israel and Palestine?

I can't.

My Tanzanian colleague, Philemon, lost his dad this morning. He was about 58 and riding his bicycle when an out-of-control taxi van hit and killed him.

If it hurts me to think about their loss, how do they feel?

Last week, a depressed guy in LA dressed up as Santa and took a handgun to a party at his ex-in-laws and killed 9 people.Shootings become "common" and that only compounds our sorrow.

The current economic disaster reveals a broken system and a habitual effort to satiate our souls with more.

Money and stuff. They don't actually heal our hearts.

The people of Zimbabwe are starving slowly. They are dying of cholera in the face of a leader who says there is nothing wrong.

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