A New Year

iar words of the Christmas texts something may strike anew, like the words, ‘there was no room (Luke 2:7).’ If we draw on our science as well as our faith we ponder that it took billions of years to get to this moment where the creator was born into his creation. It had even taken thousands of years to prepare human beings for this event. Yet when it actually arrived there was ‘no room’ for him. People did not want something new; ‘the old is good enough,’ they said (Luke 5:39).
We celebrated Christmas against the background of national and world events. An Eritrean friend wrote that Somalia moved ‘from misery to misery.’ No one it seems can move that country to a new level of life. There is ‘no room’ yet for compassion, healing and community. In Iraq the violence goes on and the former ruler was deliberately and formally killed. What does this act actually achieve? Does it promise any breakthrough into a new level of reconciliation and brotherhood? Or is it just more of the old ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth?’ There is no room for anything except what we are used to.
In our own country there was a congress in Goromonzi. Did anything new come from it? Were we inspired with any hope for 2007? Again there was ‘no room’ for imagination. generosity, big mindedness, reconciliation. Just more of the old.
And there is not much sense of happiness about our new year. People seem to be just grimly determined to keep going, whatever happens. ‘What else can we do?’ Indications about prices, school fees, school uniforms, etc, are just frightening. We’ve invented euphemisms like ‘top ups’ which can in fact be five times or more of the original fee.
Meanwhile the rain is failing and older people are noting the huge shift in the climate. In Europe they are thinking of just canceling winter altogether and we may have to find another word for ‘rainy season.’ We now know that climate change is ‘man made’ and is due to our saturating the planet with carbon emissions. But we make ‘no room’ for obvious solutions.
Yet in this ‘encircling gloom’ there is one factor that is always with us; human resilience. All over the world people just do not give up. In the deserts of Somalia and Darfur as well as in the urban deserts of Zimbabwe people just keep going, ever resourceful, ever intent on providing for their children. They make room for hope. Each new year is a moment of celebration of that ever-surfacing hope.
2 January 2007