A young woman I know has just gone through two tragedies in the past month: one friend of hers died of a drug overdose; another committed suicide.
The friend who OD’d, apparently, took Ecstasy laced with Fentanyl in order to get high.
I don’t know how the other friend committed suicide or whether she left a note, but both self-inflicted deaths were rooted in hopelessness. Want a break from the world? Here: try some of this (the first one’s free). Tired of what’s going down around you? There are myriad ways to fix that ...
It’s time to declare war. I don’t mean the “war on drugs” that we tend to sneer at in Canada; nor do I mean the “’non-aggression pact” we’ve tried in this country, which has also been disastrous. I mean the spiritual war that this is, using Hope to fight hopelessness.
Our world doesn’t offer much in the way of hope. No one seems able to stop terrorism, climate change, bullying or rising housing prices; jobs get out-sourced and the media gush over the ability of robots to do what humans can do. Drug addicts are offered “harm reduction” -- a subliminal way of telling them that they’re not worthy of being cured.
The world does not care.
And that, sadly, is where the conversation usually stops. The sentence that should follow is, “But God does – rejoice!” Didn’t He send His Son to take the punishment for every wrong thing people have done from the beginning of time until the end of this age and establish a relationship that we had long-since lost?
It’s a message with a simple hashtag:
#YourLifeMatters
Maybe the world doesn’t give a fig for you, but your life matters to God. If those words seem hollow, it’s because the world has made it that way to try to make you think that what matters is material things and that you and God’s wonderful creation — all that we see around us — is just a series of accidents; that there is nothing beyond the situation you see right now, and that the only ones who can progress, or even survive, are part of some super-elite class of humans who Don’t Need God.
That’s enough to kill hope in anyone. But consider David’s eternal question:
When I consider the heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,
What is man, that You are mindful of him?
And the son of man, that You visit him? — Psalm 8:3-4 (NKJV)
And the eternal answer:
… Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created. — Revelation 4:11 (KJV)
We exist and were created because that pleases God! That is the over-arching message of Jesus Christ and is the hope of the world. It’s the kind of message that can get someone to put down the needle, close the bottle, lift up their face. They just have to hear it.
We who are followers of Christ — like the young woman who’s seen this muckrain fall around her in the past few weeks — can bring that message. If it sounds lame, remember Paul’s words:
“The message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18)
Tell someone today. Tell someone tomorrow. Tell people you love. Tell people you dislike. Tell people you hardly know. And keep telling them:
#YourLifeMatters
Drew Snider is a writer, pastor and former broadcaster. He spent a decade ministering at Gospel Mission on Vancouver's Downtown East Side and has been a guest preacher at churches including Westshore Alliance in Langford, Westpointe in Vancouver, The Oasis in Duncan and Port McNeill Full Gospel. His e-book on the Bible and the environment, A Very Convenient Truth -- or, Jesus Warned Us There'd Be Days Like These, so Stop Worrying About the Planet and Get With His Program! is available through online booksellers. He lives in East Sooke.
You can read more articles from our interfaith blog, Spiritually Speaking, HERE
