2012 What Should We Expect?

Will 2012 be a happier, healthier, more productive year than last year? Will basic necessities be more plentiful and cost less? Will disease and starvation claim fewer lives? Will we see less pollution and less destruction of the environment?

What does it take, after all, to make a better year? We all can hope for it. But hope alone cannot make the world a better place. We can think about carefully worded statements and proposals, but pondering and proposing do not bring about improvement or change. We can argue and we can debate. But what does argument or debate change? No one man or woman has what it takes to personally change the world.

There is, however, one thing each of us can change. We can change ourselves. We can each, in effect, make ourselves a committee of one to change our own personal lives. Too simplistic? It does sound rather more simple than it is. The sad fact is that most people simply lack either the commitment to adhere to a moral standard in their lives, or they have not any idea which standard really is the right one. After all, most people reason, who is to say what is right and what is wrong?

But there is an authoritative standard by which we can measure our way of life. It is the standard established and revealed by our Designer and Maker. It is found in His instruction manual for human life, the Holy Bible. It is called the law of God. And God calls upon humanity to take it seriously and to begin to live by it. The Bible makes clear that there are only two ways of life. One way is God’s way. The other way is not. God’s way can be characterised as the way of giving, or the way of life. It is the way that is concerned for the well-being and good of others. It is the way that is committed to honesty, to truth, to justice, to fair play, equal opportunity and to living and thinking the way Jesus Christ lived and thought.

The other way can be characterised as the way of getting. It is the way that is concerned for self at the expense of others. It is the way that is committed to personal gain and gratification, to greed, to selfishness, to satisfying every personal desire and running over anyone who gets in the way. It is also the way that is the cause of all the injustice, dishonesty, cruelty, suffering, misery and exploitation that has been the sad history of mankind.

Will this year be a better year? Until humanity in general comes to the point where it will turn from this way of getting and begin to obey God, we can expect conditions to grow no better. How about you? Which way will you choose? The answer will determine whether this year and beyond will be better for you. God promises to stand by, to help, and to protect and deliver those who obey Him, those who take Him and His law seriously. And it will be these who, after the return to earth of Jesus Christ in glorious power to take rulership over all nations, will have part in Jesus’ new government that will indeed, at last, begin to change the world!

Bro David Yelulani (Banket, Zimbabwe)