A Sick, Sick World

Even among the non-Christians in my readership, I think we can agree that this world is sick.

Sick with greed. Sick with cruelty. Sick with apathy. Sick with sin.

Laden with fevers of too much passion without enough compassion.

Aching all over with illnesses of overwork, exhaustion, frustration, anger and fear.

It’s not a dead world. In fact, it’s probably far from death yet. But it’s dying.

That’s not a surprise, of course. For all of us individually, life is a chronic and fatal disease. Our time on this world has a limit, and we’ll die of something, whether on our feet or in our sleep. The world, and the larger populations on it, are no different.

I know, I know. This post probably sounds pessimistic and dreary. Maybe it sounds like I have some hopelessness growing inside me.

But that’s not it at all.

Sicknesses pass. Sure, another one will follow eventually, and a fatal one probably someday, but even in that, it means the sickness is over. The thing of it is that most of us don’t end with the sicknesses we suffer in life. We get over them, and we carry on. We get through the unpleasant symptoms and then when it’s over, we have more strength to do what needs to be done and to enjoy the world around us.

We live in a sick world. So let’s care for it. Whether ourselves, or the people around us, or groups of people, or even causes that we decide to get involved in…let’s do some healing.

Lord knows, it doesn’t have to be big-time healing. We don’t need miracle cures. It’s borrowed time anyway. What we need are longer periods of happiness and shorter ones of despair. All of us, in some way great or small, can help someone else (or even multiple someones) get through the darkness in life and have more chances to sit in the sunlight.

Time to examine the world and the people around us. Time to make some diagnoses.

Time for some healing.

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