By Amin Kef Sesay
Exactly twenty-three days from today, Christians of all continents, tribes and denominations will be joined by the Muslim brothers and sisters to celebrate a Day that the whole world as come to associate with festivity.
Here in Sierra Leone, regardless of whatever trials, tribulations and sorrows might have visited Christians and the their Muslim compatriots, everybody takes time off to be good to self, neighbors, families, loved ones and ordinary folks by being kind to each other with Christmas cards, gifts, food and messages of goodwill.
This shows that in our country, the eternal message of Jesus Christ to love your neighbor as yourself shines bright in our hearts; regardless of whatever seeming differences and quarrels we have that is mostly only exacerbated by politicians in search of power whose most potent weapon is to both gain and stay in power to divide and rule the people.
Christmas and the birth of Jesus Christ is very symbolic of a world in desperate need of peace and safety as seen in the three Magi who not only journeyed from a far distance to worship the new born King but to guide him and his parents away from sure death by a very devilish political system.
Today, two thousand and more years after his death at the hands of those who feared his spiritual power, followers of Jesus still have undying hope in a troubled world. Paul describes it as “the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). Another way of saying this is that whatever mankind goes through, life is not marred by the brokenness all of us know and are experiencing right now in terms of poverty, disease, oppression and gross violations of human rights by the powerful against the weak and helpless.
This glory that followers of Jesus carry with them in whatever circumstance they find themselves in is what the world wants to be redeemed from the punishments of a sinful nature – that is, for mankind to live in a better world, a safe world, a glorious world that will last forever.
The world-changing announcement that Paul spoke of is the good news that Jesus Christ died for our sins and rose from the dead. And this marvelous truth holds out hope for every person in the world today.
The glorious message that Christ gave that God Almighty will always be near and close is what we have just seen in the announcement by three pharmaceutical companies in the USA and Britain that a vaccine has been invented against COVID-19. Finding a vaccine to the corona-virus is a world-changing gospel.
And here’s why. Our hope is “laid up for [us] in heaven. Of this [we] have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel (Col. 1:5).
This hope is not wishful thinking. Instead, it is a solid reality because it is rooted in the death and resurrection of Jesus, “the word of the truth, the gospel, which has come to you (Col. 1:5-6).
This hope is stored up in heaven. It is the hope of glory – the joyful anticipation of a world with no viruses, no injustice, and no pain – and it is grounded in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
There’s more. Hope gives birth to faith, and it also gives birth to love, the kind of faith and love that enables us to live both for self and for others and not only for self; which if we look carefully is the cause of all the wars, pain, misery, poverty and suffering in a world flowing with God’s endless abundance.
Thus, as Christians and as worshippers of God, Christmas and Christianity should always remind us that Jesus loved us with a love that sacrificed everything for us, and when we know that love, we will be able to love others, even when it is costly.
We will be free to love a person who aren’t like us; which takes away hate, fear, jealousy, envy, bigotry, xenophobia, tribalism and cultural dogmatism – and that’s what we are called to do in the church – to understand and live wherever we are as part of a community that loves one another as Jesus loved.
