Good News – What does it mean?

Have you desired to see a newspaper with good news every day? It would be entitled “Daily Good News”. Would it be sold in large numbers? It would not, because seemingly most people have a tendency to want to read bad news. When newspapers carry headlines of “breaking or striking news” they are sold in large numbers. For this reason newspaper writers use headlines like ‘Minister assassinated’, ‘Priest defiles minor’, ‘Policeman found stealing’, or ‘Priest exchanges blows in Church’.

We can list some problems that we encounter in life, for instance, financial constraints, marital problems, sickness, unruly children, quarrels with neighbours etc. Jesus prophesied of the time when such problems would come to mankind, “Then he said to them, Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, there will be great earthquakes and in various places famines, pestilences and terrors.” (Luke 21:10-11, 34).

Why do we encounter all these problems? Some say it is part of life to be sick, poor, or selfish. In Job 5:7 we are told that “man is born to trouble as sparks fly upward”.

The truth is that all these problems are the fruits of suffering due to the original sin of mankind – sin that entered the world through Adam. “Therefore as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all men have sinned” (Romans 5:12) and, “Since all have sinned, all fall short of God’s glory” (Romans 3:23).
 

Bro. Levi Mategwa (Kakemega, Kenya)