The holly jolly season of Christmas flew by like a jet and 2016 has been replaced with 2017 just as quickly. Time moves on. Time trudges along no matter what happens to the bodies or beings it governs. The Earth revolves and rotates like clockwork throughout the millennia without reward or recognition for its labor.

Humans, as the emotional beings we are, view this behavior as rather dismal. We place our hope in changing this world. Some try to change the world by changing the appearance of its people, but the perfect appearance is so unattainable that we’re better off dressing up an AI model to look the way we never can while we rot away. Boy! Wouldn’t it be nice though just to see the perfect humans running around and smiling at us as a constant reminder of our complete and utter incapability of stepping up to our own societal paradigms for appearance?

Well if we can’t look right, certainly we can change the world by living a good life filled with good deeds to others and ourselves. We love to be rewarded for doing something good and punished for doing wrong. Of course, as individuals, we’d much rather see someone else punished than be punished. We are also envious of others’ accomplishments, but then brag about our own. Then, when it comes down to it, we end up doing the things we hate and not doing the things we love We’re funny little beings that way. Quite ugly really. In both action and appearance. What a bleak world we live in!

Why? Why is this world so depressing? What’s the point in going through our day to day lives knowing this world sucks beyond compare? Why would we wake up every day and even try? Why am I talking about it? Let’s answer the last question first! It’s been rainy all day so my body and mind are naturally lacking the Vitamin D required to write a more uplifting, happy article. The other questions are only slightly more complicated.

The world is sucky and depressing because it’s broken. This isn’t how it’s supposed to work. Murder, Theft, Envy, any other form of malice, natural disasters, and other sucky things isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. It all got broken when a fruit that was never supposed to be eaten was eaten. Scripture tells us, “cursed is the ground because of you” (Genesis 3:17), meaning creation was cursed the moment God’s command was broken the first time.

God knew he couldn’t let his creation fester with sin, and he knew of only one way to save his creation, which just so happens to be the same force that drove Him to save us in the first place. Love. God’s love for us, His creation, is the reason He sent His Son to be tormented and die on a cross to wash away all our impurities. We are forgiven and renewed in the blood of Christ. This is why we live. We live to be strengthened each day through the Word of God, and strengthen others with the same Word.

Although Christmas seemed to whizz by like a jet, the church is still celebrating Christ’s birth into this broken world. The tiny baby born in a manger saved all of creation. Our inward brokenness and our ugly bodies have been made holy through Christ, Our Savior.

Finding peace in the Babe of Bethlehem,

JS