Christmas 2 - Questions to ask ...

Wednesday, Dec 23, 2009. It is Christmas time and the various newspapers are full of stories about Christmas. People talk about various things, about prayer in different world religions, about carol services with well-known artists, about the role of the Church in Northern Ireland or about the decay or increase of church membership, trends and new developments. I even read an article yesterday which thought that it can be shown “scientifically” that humans are good, since there are always some of them who try to do good. The author thought that being good would be genetically coded in us. How true that is, we are created to live together in love and trust. But if we look into world history, that did not really work in any time we study.

What are the questions we should ask around Christmas? Is it really so important what new trend in church membership we have? How important is it to talk about the influence of the institution of the church in society? All these questions are important with respect to some aspects of society. But they do not really touch the really important things. Let us rather talk about the really important questions of life!

The really important questions are: what is the purpose of my life? Do I know what I am here for? What is driving me? What is guiding me? Do I know the source of life?

So many times every day we are not asking the important questions. We are distracted by questions of social influence - thats about power again and again. How stupid are we? We are not asking the right questions. We should rather ask: does our life have meaning for others? Are we helping others? Are we giving a contribution to the development of humanity?

These important questions are related to the key Christian questions. Do I know God? Is this Jesus who is acting in the gospels already “my” Jesus? Did he reach me with his great visions and words about life and about God? Am I part of his story? Did God reach me with Jesus? Did he bring me “home”? When people really come home to God, they start to care for others. God is a caring God. But so often our church institutions were filled with people who wanted many things more than living with God in the way Jesus had shown it. “There will be many coming in my name” Jesus had warned his disciples. We all need to repent. We need to come back to him, to change our way of life and our thinking. How do we get there? That is a key question! It is a really important question.

Let us ask and answer the important questions! What about you? Did God reach you already through Jesus? [R.W.E.P., jesusnetwork.eu]

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