So during some spare time I was watching the video on Youtube for the song, “What About Now” by Daughtry. To me, I have quite a few takes on this song, which kinda depend on my mood at the time of listening!
But, what struck me during listening to it the other day, was not necessarily the lyrics, powerful though I find them to be, but the words “Love can change the world” that flashed up on screen about half way through. At first, my initial ‘in my head’ reaction (You know what I mean!) was one of real acceptance of this but then I had a real flurry of thoughts, which is why I’m now blogging about this statement!
As a Christian, I believe that the world was completely and utterly transformed when Jesus was mocked, whipped, stoned, beaten, while hanging from nails through his hands upon the cross, with a crown of thorns upon his head. And that on that cross, Jesus defeated death by rising again. As John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” Out of love God sacrificed his own son and offered us this lifeline. And it did it change the world? Yes, I think it did. Because of this demonstration of love, the world now has a way out of condemnation for our sins. Amazing.
However, this is not to say that love can’t change the world further. There are still millions of people who live without clean water, without food, or shelter, or clothes. Or anything. Even in our local towns and cities here in the UK, there are still people who live in what is defined as ‘poverty’. Barnados defines that “A family with two adults and two children needs to have £349 each week in order to be above the poverty line” (1). Also, according to endchildpoverty.org “4 million children are living in poverty, in the UK (after housing costs)” (2)
Looking briefly now, on a more worldly scale, teamstoendpoverty.org which is a United Nations Development Program, provide some quite incredible facts:
“Almost one person in five – 1.2 billion men, women and children – are currently living in a situation of extreme poverty, surviving on the equivalent of less than one dollar a day; half the people in the world are trying to manage below the poverty level of two dollars a day.” (3)
“1.6 billion people in the world have no access to drinking water.” (4)
“800 million people have no access to health care” (5)
These are pretty shocking figures, that both close to home and thousands of miles away there are so many people struggling to have access to what we all take for granted on a daily basis. How we turn the tap, and have water, how we dial 999 and an ambulance will turn up etc etc. I’m not gunna go on and on about how everyone should be giving and doing this and doing that to change this situation, I just wanna finish by saying that, maybe, a little bit of love from each and everyone of us, could change the world further? But I guess that’s for you to decide…
Thanks for reading
Joel 
xx
P.S I recognise that this post, could well provoke the question about why if there is an all loving God, is suffering in the world, but I will politely ask you not to ask this as it is a WHOLE different subject – and maybe one that I will blog about in the future.
Sources
(1) http://www.barnardos.org.uk/what_we_do/our_projects/child_poverty/child_poverty_what_is_poverty.htm
(2) http://www.endchildpoverty.org.uk/why-end-child-poverty/key-facts
(3), (4) and (5) http://www.teamstoendpoverty.org/wq_pages/en/visages/chiffres.php
