Living in Hope and Joy in a Culture of Death and Fear

This is a culture where the news is generally scary. Everybody including the government is bankrupt and still borrowing. We're preventably diseased, but wanting the government and Science to find a cure instead of listening to ancient voices warning of hope in moderation and self discipline and (gasp) the universal, boring moral codes. We want the "good life" as defined by the advertisers and the fashion magazines, not the ancient and simple and narrow Way. A wide, broad way leads to death, and fear keeps us strapped in the car, speeding down the highway, pedal pressed to the floor, terrified to look behind or ahead.

But if you dare to pull off, to allow your eyes to be opened and your sins washed away, something happens. That broad way lined with billboards and blaring siren songs no longer calls so loudly. The exaggerated and sensationalized news, while serious and even devastating at times, is no longer world-shattering. Your world is not here exclusively anymore. In the words of one of my physics professors, you are "mostly local". I believe that our hope is not to be found in any of the "isms" (environmentalism, etc.) or frantic movements of modern times. In Christ alone we put our hope and trust, so that when this world collapses (as it has over and over, and will again), a better one awaits. That is real hope.