Where to find a place in the world...

I find it disheartening to read the newspaper. Like anyone, I have an idea of how the world should be, and the newspaper makes clear how different a world the actual one is. It astonishes me that centuries, millenia after diplomats invented international relations in order to mitigate the need for war, we still resort to it. It astonishes me that within countries, such as the Sudan, the rival ethnic groups think taking life in unimaginable quantity is preferable to some sort of accomodation of one another.

As a Christian, I should not be disheartened. Jesus told his disciples that there would be wars and rumours of wars - clearly my faith's own eschatology makes it obvious that I can't expect the world to improve much. So does that leave me with a faith that consigns the world I live in to whatever fate awaits it?

I can't take that attitude. Because after all the apocalyptic talk of Matthew 24 comes the last lesson Jesus' gives his disciples, the parable of the King in Matthew 25. Who are the blessed, at the right hand of the king? Those who fed the hungry, gave drink to the parched, housed the foreigners, clothed the naked, helped the sick, and visited the prisoners. "Keep awake," Matthew 24 asserts after the doom and gloom because the world may never change much. But what we're left with in Matthew 25 is the prescription for the doom and gloom - change what you can.