Does Christianity offer any help in uncertain times?

We live in troubled times.  Korea testing rockets, our country is still at war in Afghanistan, there is always a fear that terrorism may strike at ourselves, or someone we love.  The “Aussie dollar” is still high, manufacturing industries are closing and unemployment is rising.  Europe faces an uncertain financial future that threatens other nation’s economies.

Would Christianity have anything to offer in these circumstances to help people cope?

When the apostle Paul considered the lasting benefits of Christianity he wrote, “and now these three remain:  faith, hope and love.”

Faith, hope and love, the world under values these but without anyone of them people’s very survival can be threatened.  

Viktor Frankel a Jewish neurologist and psychiatrist discovered just how important each were. 

In 1942, as a young doctor, along with his new bride, his mother, father, and brother, he was arrested and taken to a concentration.  The events that occurred there and at three other camps led the Frankel to realize the significance of faith, hope and love.

The loss of the research he had been undertaking was a significant event for him.  He had sewn it into the lining of his coat, but was forced to discard it at the last minute.  He spent many nights trying to reconstruct it, in his mind and on slips of stolen paper.

Another significant moment came while on march to work.  Another prisoner wondered out loud about the fate of their wives.  Then Frankel began to think about his own wife, and realized that she was present within him; in his mind.  He later wrote, “The salvation of man is through love and in love.  I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. “

And throughout his ordeal, he could not help but see that, among those given a chance for survival, it was those who held on to a hope of the future,  whether it be a significant task before them, or a return to their loved ones who were most likely to survive their suffering.

Frankel wrote …“It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future … and this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.”

Does Christianity have anything to offer King Island if things get hard.  Yes as it always has; the greatest and most valuable of all gifts.  Christianity offers the sure and certain hope that God is watching over us, he loves us and cares for us with a love that will last for all eternity.  We enter into that love and hope through faith is God and his Son Jesus.

Faith, hope and love but the greatest of these is love; God’s love, because only he can overcome the world.