We have never had such a 1st Advent
On Friday and Saturday several hundred medical students and doctors met at an online conference entitled “Essential”. Since the “Arbeitskreis Christlicher Mediziner” (the German working group of Christian medics) had prepared the internet event one can easily guess where the speakers were looking for the essential. Yesterday a children’s oncologist and his wife, a special needs paedagogue, spoke about the challenges working with children who had cancer. As a case study they presented a 19-year-old boy who died of leukaemia.
No Christmas markets will be taking place this year. Large groups enjoying mulled wine and bratwurst won’t be spotted. The time of Advent is in part sacrificed as collateral damage to the pandemic. Which is extremely sad. But on the other hand this deceleration offers each of us the opportunity to breathe calmly and reflect.
This year we are quite a way away from a peaceful new year. In order to count the worldwide areas of conflict and strife in which people kill each other, the fingers on both hands do not suffice. But soon it could get really critical. As soon as a worldwide vaccination-programme has hopefully pinned down the pandemic everyone everywhere will start thinking about the costs of these last exceptional months. Yesterday for the first time I read about a politician who could even imagine Germany filing for national bankruptcy in the long run.
Illness, farewell and death.
Crises in politics, in economics and in the health sector.
Perplexity, fear and doubt.
Perhaps this year, in 2020, we can agree for the first time, independent of which worldview we hold, that we humans need redemption. Since to the above-mentioned calamities one has to add egoism of private individuals and global forces to the equation.
But could the child in the manger, who as a young man spent three years wandering through the Eastern part of the Mediterranean, many any difference to this hopeless situation? Jesus Christ said: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me!”
We at Diospi Suyana want to do everything in our power to fight against injustice, poverty and suffering. But we are no unrealistic dreamers. At the end of the day only God can truly transform the human heart.
That is why is it prudent once again to remind oneself that there is a deeper meaning to Christmas. There is a reason for the season. And the core of the Christian Faith is and will remain God’s greatest rescue operation that started around 2,000 years ago in the little town of Bethlehem. /KDJ (Picture: YouTube).
