Dialogue: Amid the chaos, God is in control

By GARTH GEORGE

As Christians prepare to celebrate the anniversary of an event we consider to be the most important in the history of the world - the birth of our Saviour, Jesus Christ - we cannot help but be conscious of what is going on around us, at home and abroad.

Some of us might even wonder whether the words of the angels who proclaimed his birth - "Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, goodwill towards men" - don't ring a bit hollow this year.

In the weeks before the celebration or our anniversary, 12 members of our national family - men and women, boys and girls, all of whom would have been looking forward to Christmas - have had their lives brutally snuffed out.



The news throughout the year has been frequently punctuated by reports of unspeakable violence committed against helpless children, of brutal rapes and vicious assaults on innocent citizens, of burglaries, robberies and muggings - a year-long parade of criminal mayhem.

In the world at large we are still coming to terms with the ghastly atrocity committed in New York and Washington in September and the subsequent war against terror in Afghanistan.

We are sickened by the continuing violence, death and destruction in the Israel-Palestine conflict and other nasty little wars, we are only too painfully aware that poverty and famine still stalk vast areas of our world and we are yet to recover from the murder in Brazil of one of our favourite sons.

So how do we Christians approach our annual celebration - showering one another with gifts, eating, drinking and being merry - in the light of all this?

Easy. We count our blessings - and keep firmly in the forefront of our minds the fundamentals of our faith.

We thank God that he is indeed our God and that we are among his people, that he is creator and sustainer of the universe and father of our Lord Jesus Christ and that, in spite of what might seem evidence to the contrary, he is in control.

We remember that he is I AM and, therefore, with us every second of every minute of every hour of every day, and that he is the same yesterday, today and forever and thus imparts to us a changeless security as we go about our daily lives in this increasingly complex and troubled world.

At this time of the year we recall especially those wonderful words of Jesus himself: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life."

We recall, too, that Jesus' entry into this world came at a time when life wasn't all that choice. He was, after all, born in a stable at the back of a pub because no other accommodation was available.

At the command of a somewhat heavy-handed foreign power, his heavily pregnant mother and her partner had had to walk a long way in the middle of winter to get to their home town of Bethlehem to be counted in a Roman census.

Within weeks of his birth, his parents had to spirit him away into Egypt because Herod, the Jewish king, had ordered that every male child born in and around Bethlehem within the previous two years be slaughtered.

And only after years of scratching a living in a foreign country were they able to return to their homeland where Jesus followed his father into the carpentry trade before he began a ministry that would turn the world upside down and divide history into two eras.

We have to remember that Jesus was human, that he suckled at his mother's breast, had to be toilet trained, had to learn to walk and talk just like any other kid, had to go to school, be part of a community, earn a crust - to experience all the things that we have to as we grow into adulthood.

We know, too, that he was subject to all the temptations known to man, for the writer of the letter to the Hebrews tells us: "For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathise with weaknesses but was in all ways tempted as we are ... "

And since Jesus came to Earth to reveal to us the nature and purposes of God, we know that we have a God who understands us better than we understand ourselves, who is closer to us than our heartbeats, who rejoices when we rejoice and weeps when we weep, who loves us no matter where we are and what we do, who is always ready to listen and to give us his counsel and to bless us with that peace that passes all understanding.

So as another Christmas Day arrives, let us leave the cares of the world in God's hands and revel in these words of our Lord's that ring down the ages to us today: "In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

* garth_george@nzherald.co.nz