Sometimes I read something and have to blink back tears.
Tonight I was scanning the news and saw an article about mass illegal immigration from Serbia and beyond through the Hungarian border to reach Western Europe. This has probably been happening for a long time, and I don’t ever pretend to be on top of things. But, tonight, the article was highlighted because of Hungary’s recent decision to seal the border with massive barbed wire and walls.
Accompanying this article was a brutal description of deaths: refugees found floating to shore from capsized boats in the Mediterranean, photos of little girls with hair tangled up in barbed wire, a freezer truck dumped at the border oozing decomposed bodies of Syrians who were trapped inside. They found a baby in there, by the way.
What is this dark world? Why? Sin? Evil? Travesty after travesty?
I can’t call it tragic because it’s expected. Sin has infected everything, and although there’s a flurry of politic over immigration everywhere, my bottom line is that there should never be found a decomposing body of a child trapped in an abandoned truck. Ever.
So….the Gospel.
In light of our burning-Rome society, the corruption and the indifference and the glazed eyes of smartphone addicts who stand in line for bus unmoved by anything shocking anymore, the HOPE that Christ offers is palpable and present. The truth that God is HERE is beautiful, and in some ways it couldn’t be such without darkness and suffering.
When Paul affirmed our God is compassionate and of all comfort (2 Cor 1:3-5), when the angel said Emmanuel means “God is with us” (Matt 1:23), when the Lord wept for his friends (John 11:35), when Christ proclaimed that God so loved the world (John 3:16)–how dare we assume that these words were spoken and meant inside a vacuum that lacks empathy for our world and fallen condition!
For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses (Heb 4:14-16). Our Lord loves this world and is coming back to redeem it. His unrequited love continues for this broken little ball called Earth and these broken little people called humanity.
His promises endure. It’s impossible to see past the world’s darkness and not despair, but I read somewhere that nothing is impossible with God.
