What is the world coming to?

Plenty of people have asked this question, and I'm no exception. How many of you have flipped through the newspaper? No demands here, just today's issue.

Race riots tear Australian community apart.
Rich nations dally while poor ones starve.
A president euphemises 'Christmas' with 'holidays', insulting Christians and non-Christians alike.
Radical Islamists in Iran call for Israel's removal.

Over here in Singapore,
Someone is jailed for filming up women's skirts.
A mentally-ill man allegedly attacks his mother, fracturing her skull.

Isn't it time for someone to ask it even now? What the world is coming to implies a time things were better before, when good was good and bad was bad. Whenever we did something we didn't ask, "How does it make me feel?", but "Is this good? Is this loving?" And Christmas does remind us of a time this was so.

Think of it. When God saw the mire of humanity and what it had become, He was repulsed. But repulsed at the filth we're in, the filth we've become. I'm sure you know the feeling. What's the world coming to? What have I done? The stink of our sin has barely reached God's nostrils, and we instinctively know His judgement is deserved.
Oh, you can deny it's coming. You can deny He's even there (The anti-ID crowd, wink wink). You can deny the Earth, the universe and everything in it is His, if only to escape the moral cesspool we can't deny exists.
Just look at the paper.

But when we accept He's real, when we realise our sin is just too much, what do we do? It's amazing that the most blatant sinners fled towards Jesus, instead of away from Him like so many of us. Because of who He is. Because of what He came to do.

Because of who He is. God in flesh. The God of the universe taking on our weaknesses, our limitations, our trials and temptations.
He understands what it's like to not get your rights.
He understands what it's like to have your hormones awaken, your body changing, and that flush of love.
He understands what it's like to be too busy for what you want to do.
And he understands how you feel that flash of anger, that lure of sin, and those lies we're told by the devil that our faith cannot withstand public scrutiny, that other racial groups aren't to be respected as fellow brothers and sisters, that our industrial success cannot be compromised to save millions of lives, that it's okay to insult a woman's decency.
He knows where they come from. An evil influence in a corrupt heart.

And because of what He came to do. The Bible's most-quoted verses are John 3:16-17. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved."
God hates our evil and corrupt hearts. He hates them so much He kills His own Son to rescue us from them. He loves us enough to not only rescue us, but to become one of us. A holy, pure, infinite God becoming a puny, timebound human weakened by hunger, birthed in a dirty manger.
Not only that. A puny, timebound human mocked by men and put to a shameful and extremely painful death. A death that forever changed the course of human history.

Into the tomb He went, and on Sunday out He came! Don't imagine our leaders, sincere though they are, can make a utopia on earth. Sin, fear, guilt and death. Those are the scourges He frees us from. Those are the scourges He understands, the burdens He lifts. He is the One who announces:
"Come to me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28)

And sure is the destination of those He continues to guide. That's what all began in a Bethlehem manger two millenia ago.

(Apologies to Max Lucado, Philip Yancey and any others I may have borrowed from. This was just the way my thoughts came out.)