Wishes for the New Year

It is the new year once again. Welcome to the year 2010. We have passed into the second decade of the 21st century.

This is going to be a year of change for me personally – a new  baby, a new home, a new career perhaps? A renewed focus on life and its purpose.

I have been reading this book entitled What Matters compiled by David Elliot Cohen. It is a collection of photo essays depicting essential issues of our times ranging from climate change, environmental degradation, lack of clean safe water and sanitation, genocide, jihadism, ongoing Iraq war, poverty, child labour, child brides, oil addiction, realities of rural-urban migration, AIDS and malaria.

I realised that I am somehow numbed by the number of deaths caused by wars, genocides and radical ideologies. Instead I find myself saddened by environmental degradation and its impact on the common people and the inequality of income distribution throughout the world. It awakens my senses and makes me so indignant about the atrocities that have been created or condoned by those who are rich and in power without remorse on the effects on those who are poor and speechless.

I pray for a bold step forward to abolish poverty in our world this new year. But economic development must be sustainable and cannot be justified at the cost of our environment. For what use is there to create another nation hungry for material wealth if it doesn’t nourish the soul and make better people in the process?

I believe that God loves the people He created more than the world He has given to us to enjoy. Much as I think men sometimes deserve to die for all the damage caused to our earth, it is the human spirit that will live eternally and that is what we as Christians need to fight for.