The Broken World.

The 21st century is marked with a human migration crisis, counting up to 60 million people who have been displaced from their homes. These past few months, I have been able to put names into these numbers, and stories to statistics. Names turned to friends, and friends turn to family. I sat in my friend’s house, listening as she was telling me stories of her Somali friends who sold sex for food. I symphatized deeply for the living conditions most of my friends have to endure, surviving with only one meal through the day. It broke my heart. I wanted to do something yet I couldn’t do much. Isn’t this feeling of helplessness what we feel when we hear news about:

• The Boko Haram who kidnap children to make them child soldiers
• The family seperation at the US border
• The children and teenage girls trapped in the trafficking ring

In this incomprehensible reality of broken people and broken systems, do you find yourself yearning for the justice of God?

The Christian Hope.

You can only bear the bad news when you have the good news. In a world full of suffering and pain, if it wasn’t for the cross, I wouldn’t believe in the God of the Bible. The Christian faith believes:

• That the unarmed Prince of Peace hears and stands up for the orphans, widows, and foreigners (James 1)
• That the King of Kings was born in a borrowed barn and died in a borrowed tomb
• That the suffering Servant knows what it feels like to be seperated from the Father (Psalms 22:1)
• That the Messiah was tortured and was trialled unjustly in the hands of sinners so he could be our sympathetic High Priest (Heb 4:14)

Victory, in the Christian narrative, took on the form of death. As OS Guiness would expound on: “So did supreme power mask itself as weakness, unbounded wealth take on the guise of poverty, unfathomable wisdom arrive incognito as foolishness, and ultimate worth come down looking humble to the point of being contemptible.”

The Christian Response.

Christianity is a highly distinctive religion for being both “world-affirming” and “world-denying. The doctrine of creation and the fall imply that the world is a gift to be enjoyed. It affirms the secular without being a secularist. It delights in the this-worldly without being worldly. It also means we are ‘in’ but not ‘of’ the world. Which implies sacrifice, not just fulfilment. And allows us the hope for another world while enjoying this one.

Following the example of our crucified King, We can expect sufferings in this world. We can let go of the weight of the world, rest in our limitations that we are not saviour, but also do our best to obey our calling faithfully, pursuing our utmost for His Highest.

The church, as it has been in the past from establishing the first universities to introducing the concept of human rights, need to continue to be on the front line of “loving our neighbors”:

• To build bridges, not walls
• To lay down our lives, not preserve it selfishly
• To be servant of all, not to be served

We strive until His second coming, holding the tension between already but not yet. And when that day comes, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death' or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” - Revelations 21: 4

*Feel free to respond and ask questions regarding my musing.