Helping without any sacrifice

The perfect anti-message to Christmas

My KLM flight has been cancelled and I am obliged to spend the next three hours at Amsterdam Airport waiting for the next possible flight.  I wander over to a newspaper kiosk looking for some inspiration.  The tabloids do not fail to offer supposed life-counselling, or should I say they write what their readership wants to be informed about; their only aim is better sales figures and if they achieve that by writing what their readership wants to hear, so be it.

Bottom right of the cover of the glossy magazine “Freundin” (translated “girlfriend”) I read the headline: “I would love to do something good – this is how you (without much effort) can improve the lives of the people around you.”

Now is not that brilliant?  We all strive to be good human beings and want to wear the cloak of willingness to help.  But, and that goes without saying, without much effort on our parts.  If I make a donation, I take it from my surplus, since I should not feel it.  None of us wants to be a moral skunk.  A little bit of niceness her and a small donation there, fine, but please, I do not want to make a sacrifice.

Christmas 2,000 years ago.  God starts the biggest rescue operation in history.  In Jesus Christ he was born as a child in Bethlehem, lying in swaddling bands in a manger.  33 years, that were marked of privation, later Christ dies on the cross for mankind’s sins.

The maximum price was paid to redeem the lives of us humans and to better them radically.  First Jesus was dragged through the dirt, then his blood flowed.  Sadly the article in “Freundin” did not mention this aspect at all. /KDJ

I would love to do something good.
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