In Time Such As This

Well, we all got a jolt, then a tremor, and finally a quake of another kind in recent weeks and days. In its wake, houses are foreclosed, investment accounts are shrunk, heads are spinning, minds are unsettling, and hearts are aching and broken.

The Wall Street capitalists tasted the bitter gall of excessive greed. They spit it out to the Main Street, and we all smelled the foul of it. The government is hurtled into a whirlwind, really a hurricane, of bailing out the distressed and bankruptcy-bound financial firms. Cataclysm-loving and havoc-wreaking short-sellers are sidelined for at least a day.

Now let's pause to take a much needed inventory. Inventory of life, that is.

Let's dwell on the value and self worth today. What we value can take on a collective meaning. So collective, it is really global. The global stakeholders can change the value of a stock in the twinkling of an eye. When more people feel it is overvalued, the stock goes south. The trouble is, the value can sink to a bottomless pit, unsupported by any fundamentals. Thus, whatever financial fortress we take refuge in may tumble down into a worthless pile of rubbles by the end of yesterday's session of trading. Still in doubt? Ask the Lehman Brothers over 150 years before present.

Our life's self worth can be so tied up with the value of our material wealth that we delude ourselves into categorical thinking that we are rich, poor, or just getting by. We often unconsciously fail to recognize the intrinsic value and worth of our life. We pity ourselves. Some of the fainthearted marshal their last ounce of courage only to end their misery in time like this.

Need not be so desperate! Fortunately, life is worth the living because of two compelling reasons.

First, our life is worth the dying of Christ on the Cross. In Christ, the Son of God, we find the greatest value and worth of our life. If God were a modern day IT guru, he might have easily reformatted or tossed into dustbin the virus-infected computers. God did not do that. The Son of God chose to become one of us, so that we may one day become like him. The more we find value in Christ, the more we have struck the mine of imperishable gold. I invite you to find value in Christ first, then yourself.

Second, our life is worth the living because Christ lives. The crucified Christ on Good Friday became the resurrected Christ on Easter Sunday. Such simple truth carries the greatest import to our outlook in life. Imagine, no amount of adversities in life can deter us from living in the shining rays of the blessed hope. Not stock crash. Not joblessness. Not sickness. Not even death. I invite you to go back to the first true dawn of new humanity, to the garden tomb site where Christ was once buried. The angel of light will tell us again as to Mary the Magdalene: he is not here, he is risen.

I invite you to spread the wing of faith and soar above the turmoils roiling in our midst. Let's gaze into the horizon beyond the sunset, brimming with light, and see in the lens of faith our heavenly home with our God. Let's have the true hope of eternal life, the hope that no politicians will ever be able to deliver. The audacity of hope, which is, Christ in us!