Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Mourning Our Times

“The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us …”

It seems that in the past few months, our country is reaching boiling point. Everything seems to be ready to explode – crime, corruption, demonstrations, rising cost of basic items and freedom of religion and so on. We all know about it and we all talk about it. It affects us, and most of the time it makes us angry. As Malaysians we want to live in a peaceful and harmonious context. And this context is getting eroded day by day.

One major issue lately was the Hindraf issue. Though most of us do not agree with the way this movement demonstrated for its cause, we all agree that there is marginalization amongst all races in Malaysia.

But most of us stop at just disagreeing and accepting the follies of our country. How many of us actually did something after we realized that marginalization is a problem for our country? How many of us actually went out to our neighbourhood and actually did something to stop the rot? When we say our country is in its boiling point, don’t we realize we are part of our country?

Jesus engaged the world by dwelling in the world. And it took him all his earthly life to see, empathize and take action for all the needs of his society. We all know that dying on the cross was not the only thing he did for us. He lived amongst us.

We need to hear more stories of people engaging the world today. We need to hear of people trying their best to make Malaysia liveable. We need to do our part. Do share with us some real stories of people trying to engage our society. Only then can we see the hope of the gospel realized in real lives.