You Will Soon Be Set Free (part 4)

"You Will Soon Be Set Free" (part 4)

Luke 21:28a

You know what I've heard ever since 9th grade?  That's when I grew from 5'5" to 6'5".  What do you think I've heard?  "Stand up straight."  

After growing another 4 inches in high school, then I really heard it.  "Don't stoop!"  "Be proud of your height"!  I would reply something like, "I can't help but stoop and bend over--I have to talk to all you short people."

Former basketball great Wilt Chamberlain was proud of his height--even arrogant about it.  One time, when he was traveling with the 76'ers, he was on an elevator at the hotel.  A lady looked up at him and said, "How's the weather up there, Wilt?"  He looked down on her, spit on her, and said, "It's raining."  Evidently he had heard enough of that weather line.

It's hard to remember to stand up straight.  Sometimes I think I am.  Then I see a picture of me, and my shoulders are rounded, my neck is bent down, and I'm not straight.

When I was in seminary, some old guy, a retired pastor was visiting the seminary.  He was very tall.  He struck up a conversation with me and one of the first things he said was, "Stand up straight."  He told me I should stick my thumbs out away from my body--that was a trick he used to stand up straight.  I was in my early twenties.  I didn't need to be told by some old geezer how to keep my thumbs out and stand up straight. Do you know what that looks like—how dweebish it is—walking around with your thumbs out!?  Now I'm an old geezer and I still don't stand straight.  And I never kept my thumbs out, either.

II

Posture is important, though.  Not just standing straight.  But what our posture, our body language, is communicating to others.

There’s a lot of posturing going on in our world these days.  It doesn’t matter if it's a basketball player dunking on his defenders head then strutting back down the court; or, Russia and Turkey putting troops on each other’s boarders; or one of the Republican candidates at the latest debate trying to appear tough and commanding.

We all do a bit of posturing, don’t we—trying to convey a false impression.  Posing is another word for it.  Posing and posturing.  Trying to impress or mislead others about who we are simply through our posture.

We do that because we all realize how our posture conveys what we are feeling, or how we are feeling about ourselves, about others, or our situation in life.  If you pay attention to posture and body language you can discern a lot about other people.  The reason you need to pay attention to body language and posture is that we communicate more with our bodies than with our words.  The truth is, our bodies never lie even when our words are.

III

I have been directing your attention, this Advent, to Jesus’ Second Coming as contrasted to his First Coming.  I talked two weeks ago about the state of the world that Jesus first came into, and the state of the world when he will come again.

At his Second Coming, Jesus says our posture should change.  When Jesus comes again we should straighten up, stand up, lift up our heads, rise to our feet.  At the first coming, people’s posture was different.  Then, people kneeled before the Savior Child.  Before this awesome visage of humble power, God in a baby, people could do no other than fall to a kneeling posture.

But when Jesus comes again, it is time to get up.  It’s time to get on our feet, straighten up, and lift our faces.

If people are to rise and straighten up when Jesus comes again, what does that tell us about people’s posture before that Second Coming?  What truth were people’s bodies and posture conveying before Jesus comes again?

First, they are bent over.  Maybe bent over in defeat.  Dani Canaan put up a video on her Facebook site this week.  It was the last point of the volleyball match between #1 USC and 9th ranked KU.  That last point seemed to go on forever.  KU won the point and won the match.  The difference in posture between the two teams was amazing.  The USC team had stunned, blank looks on their faces, with shoulders rolled in.  Just standing still.  Unable even to talk.  They were bent over by defeat.  That’s how people look before Jesus will come back—bent over in defeat.  Like they were fighting to keep their place in the world and didn’t make it.  Feeling like losers.

Imagine a world of people feeling like losers.  How many millions of people are feeling bent over.  Defeated by life’s harsher circumstances.  Hunger.  Grief.  Oppression.  Homelessness.  Refugees.  Poverty.  Addictions.  Jobless.  Chronic or terminal illness.  Victims of terrorists.  All bent over and defeated.

Secondly, when Christ comes again, if people are to lift their heads, they must have been going through life with heads down.  Facing the ground.  Maybe eyes closed.  Feeling depressed.  Not looking where they were going, especially.  Just shuffling along.  Putting one foot in front of the other.  No sense of mission or purpose in life.  Watching their round-toed shoes slowly stepping forward, right, shuffle, left, shuffle, right, shuffle, left, shuffle.

When you are trying to assess someone’s body language while having a conversation, particularly when the other person won’t look you in the eyes, how are you reading that?  Especially if they always look down and never look up.  What are they saying about how they feel about themselves?  Think about a world of people who feel so worthless about themselves, so aimless, so purposeless, they can’t and won’t lift their faces to look at other people in the eye, or look around and see the world.

Imagine the burden it is to carry the feeling that you are not important to anyone.  That no one cares.  The feeling of being alone.  That if you don’t look out for yourself, no one else will.  And you’re not even sure if you are up to the task of looking after yourself.  Those kinds of feelings keep you looking down, neck bent with the weight of self-resignation or despair.  Even humiliation.

IV

Combine those two postures into one body.  (Do this.) Bent over.  Shoulders hunched and rolled inwards.  Neck bent down.  Face parallel to the ground.  It’s as if their body is boxed in—bent and compressed to fit the space of the box which is called misery.  They are in the box and unable to get out, or even want to get out.  Unable to free themselves, they are stuck in the cramped box of depression and burden and exhaustion and defeat.  Nothing to be proud about.  No one proud of them.

One of the words in the Bible for sin literally means to be boxed in.  To be compressed, to be squeezed down upon, and totally constricted.

That’s how the world of people is.  People may not look like that.  We are good at pretending.  Look around at people, and pay attention to their bodies; you will see the signs of the betrayal of their seemingly happy words—shoulders slightly rounded, faces down more than looking up, the loss of a lightness to their step.  Pay attention; you will see it.  God does.  And that’s why Christ must come again, to straighten people up, to lift up their faces once and for all.

V

When Christ will come, all people will finally be able to raise up.  They will become unbent.  The poet, Ranier Maria Rilke, in one of his poems, wrote:

I want to unfold

I don’t want to stay folded anywhere,

because where I am folded,

there I am a lie…

I like those lines because they describe for me what Christ will do when he comes.  Not just in the Second Coming, but also when Jesus comes to us at all times.  Jesus will “unfold” us.  (Do this.) Jesus will first get us out of the cramped space we have been folded into—that we most likely have folded ourselves into—and release us from those boxes.  And then Jesus will begin the slow and amazing process of unfolding us so we can stand up straight again.  So we can lift our faces again and look him in the eyes, face-to-face, and never hang our head again.

Because, as the poet Rilke has in his poem, when we are folded up human beings, we are “a lie.”  That is, we aren’t who we are.  We aren’t who we can and should be in the name of Jesus.  Our lives are no where near where they should be when we are folded up.  We are living a lie.

Folded up, we have fallen for the lie that this is all we can amount to.

We have fallen for the lie that there is no mission in life to which we can give ourselves to.

We have fallen for the lie that we can be nothing great, nor do great things as God’s human beings.

We have fallen for the lie that Jesus can do nothing with us now that we have allowed ourselves to be folded and boxed.

That is all a lie.

Jesus doesn’t want us to live that lie.  That lie must be broken for all human beings who have been bent over, face down, and folded up.  That is why Jesus has come and will come again.  Now that Jesus has come, and when Jesus comes again, and however many more times Jesus must come until we get it, he is extending us his hand.  Once we touch that hand we feel a new backbone forming.  We are given a new set of eyes that aren’t afraid to look into another’s eyes.  We feel ourselves unfolding, straightening up, face up, standing tall, poised, and ready to live the Jesus life.  Brave.  Poised.  Strong.  Confident.  Elated, even.

Stand up straight.  Raise your heads.  Jesus is coming.

You Will Soon Be Set Free. (Part 3)

"You Will Soon Be Set Free". (Part 3)

Luke 21:27

Writer and musician Spike Milligan has been attributed with the quote, “Everybody has to be somewhere.”  It makes sense, does it not?  You can’t say, “I’m in the middle of nowhere,” because nowhere doesn’t exist.

Do you know what the word, “utopia” literally means?  It is the combination of two Greek words.  “Eu” means “no.”  “Topos” means “place.”  So utopia literally means “no place.”  A utopia doesn’t exist.  It is a no place.

Which means that Jesus was born in a utopia.  The story of his birth in Luke says there was “no place” for Mary to have her baby.  No place.

Oh, there was a place.  As I started this message, everyone has to be somewhere.  Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem.  That’s definitely a place.  It was a small town.  Still is.  But it was even smaller back then.  Evidently only one inn.  The story tells us there was “no place in the inn,” not, “no place in an inn.”

No place.  No tucked away corner.  No scrap of a place on the floor some where.  No storeroom.  No back hallway.  No place.

What’s even sadder is, this is not just about an inn with no place.  Remember why Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem.  There was a census going on.  The Roman government wanted to make sure it was getting all the taxes they thought they deserved.  In order to be counted and therefore appropriately taxed by the occupational army and provisional Roman government, a person had to go back to their family home of origin.

What that means is that, for Joseph and Mary, all their extended family would be in Bethlehem as well.  Aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents, nieces and nephews.  All of Joseph and Mary’s family would be there.  Which begs the question:  Why did Joseph and Mary have to find no place in an inn?  Why didn’t a second or third or first cousin give a pregnant relative a place?  Why was there no welcome given to Joseph and Mary so that they could have a place where their baby could be born?

How could the famous middle eastern ethic of hospitality break down, so that even a pregnant relative could find “no place?”  Even among the middle eastern bedouins, if a stranger wandered into their camp, and the bedouin took that stranger into their tent out of hospitality, the bedouin was bound to protect their guest with their life.  That was the unwritten rule of hospitality.  To offer no hospitality, which literally means to take a stranger in and give them a place, give them protection, to offer no hospitality was a huge insult.  Mary and Joseph, and eventually a baby, were given “no place.”

To treat someone as such is to make them invisible.  To give them “no place” is to make them invisible.  So when Jesus came into the world, offered no hospitality, no room, no home, no extended family gathered round, no place, it was as if he were invisible to the rest of that place.  Even, as we shall see, when the shepherds came, all they found was Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus.  No one else.  At a “no place” stable cave.  Mostly invisible to the rest of that little town, and entirely invisible to the rest of the world.

II

But, when Jesus comes again, he will come on the clouds.

There are two reasons Jesus will come on the clouds.  First, a cloud was symbolic for the presence of God.  Remember during the Exodus, when the Hebrew slaves were taken out of Egypt by Moses?  As they crossed the wilderness a pillar of cloud led them in the right direction during the day time—the cloud of God’s presence.

When Moses went up on the mountain to receive the two stone tablets with the Ten Commandments inscribed on them, a cloud descended upon the mountain—the cloud of the presence of God.

When Jesus was transfigured and met with Moses and Elijah, they were enveloped in a cloud—the cloud of the presence God.  When Jesus ascended into heaven after the Resurrection, he did so on a cloud—the cloud of the presence of God.

That Jesus, in his Second Coming will come on the clouds means that he will come in and with the full presence of God.

And the second reason Jesus will come again on the clouds is, unlike the first coming in the stable, he will be totally visible to the whole world.  John the Divine tells us in the book of Revelation,

Riding the clouds, he’ll be seen by every eye…

People from all nations and all times.  (Revelation 1:7)

No longer invisible, where there is “no place” for him, Jesus will come again and there will be no place that won’t see him this time.  The angels told the shepherds that the Savior will be for all people.  But not all people saw.  Not all people believed.  In the Second Coming, all will see, and all will be challenged to believe because of what they will see.

III

In the first coming, at the birth of Jesus, the Savior had a manger for a bed.  A feed trough.  Remember how you were with your first child.  So over-protective.  Not letting just anyone hold your baby.  Trying to protect them from germs.  Thinking that you could provide a protective barrier for your new baby against the grit and grime of the world.

Imagine Mary and Joseph holding the new born baby Jesus, looking for someplace to lay him down for a nap.  And you spy the manger.  The feeding trough.  The place where coarse food—the entire corn plant and other silage—was placed for the horses and cattle.  The place where those animals would chew over and slobber into.  Years of build up of animal drool and bits of leftover stalks and leaves.  That’s the only place to lay their baby—the Savior of the world.

Not a very glorious place, by a long shot.  No velvet blankets to wrap the babe in.  Only swaddling cloths, a thin layer of wrap to protect your newborn from the detritus of a feeding trough.  Not regal at all.  No one would see anything of dignity in a baby wrapped in stripped pieces of cloth, and sleeping in a manger.  Could this really be the Savior of the world?

But, when Jesus comes again, he will come with “great glory.”  Instead of a dingy, dark and dank cattle cave, Jesus will come again in eye shielding brightness and brilliance.  Instead of the indignity of a no place, Jesus will come again with overpowering majesty.  Instead of having to be laid in a cattle crib on top of chewed up bits and orts, Jesus will come again with the magnificence as if he were a King upon a resplendent throne.  Instead of appearing as a nobody in a no place, Jesus will come again, preeminent above all and over all.

C.S. Lewis wrote in his sermon, “The Weight of Glory,”

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship…There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” 

What he’s saying is that all of us are being fitted for heaven.  Some day we will have heavenly bodies, that, if we saw them now, we would be in awe.  Multiply that by the thousands in relation to Jesus.  In the first coming, in the first Advent, Jesus and his surroundings seemed dull and uninteresting.  Jesus was just an ordinary baby in a less than ordinary cattle cave sleeping in a stall.

But in the Second Coming, the Second Advent, Jesus will be seen in all his glory.  No mere mortal, but the glorious, magnificent and majestic Savior and Son of God, so bright we will be unable to look upon him.  In the first coming people looked at Jesus and turned away, not really seeing anything they thought worth looking at.  In the Second Coming no one will be able to look away from him.

IV

In the first coming, Jesus seemed to be totally powerless.  Certainly, babies are powerless.  They are completely dependent on their parents for everything.  There is nothing they can do for themselves other than cry hoping someone will pay attention to them.

Jesus was born, not to a wealthy family, but a peasant couple, who themselves had no personal power.  Repeatedly they were turned away.  As I’ve mentioned, they were people who had no place, and thus no power.

Joseph and Mary were doormats, and that made Jesus a doormat.  According to Bill Farmer's newspaper column, J. Upton Dickson was a fun-loving fellow who said he was writing a book entitled Cower Power. He also founded a group of submissive people. It was called DOORMATS. That stands for “Dependent Organization of Really Meek And Timid Souls”.  They hope people like the name of their group…unless there are any objections? Their motto is: “The meek shall inherit the earth”—if that's okay with everybody.  Their symbol is the yellow traffic light.

That’s how Jesus came into the world—a powerless doormat.  But when Jesus comes again, it will be with power.  This word power in Greek is the word dunamis—the same word we get the word dynamite from.  Explosive power.  Earth Crushing power.

It’s also the kind of power that is inherent in a thing or person.  Most people gain power because it is given to them or they earn it.  Prince Charles is next in line to be King of England, not because he is an inherently kingly person, but simply because of the family he was born into.  His power has been conferred upon him.

But the power Jesus has when he comes again will be a power that resides in himself just by virtue of his nature—his nature as God.  God may be the only being in the universe that has not had power conferred upon him, but is power inherent.  Jesus, God in the flesh, will come again into the world with that same natural power.

The irony is that in the first Advent, Jesus had that same power within himself, but people didn’t see it.  Nor did Jesus totally exercise it—a miracle here or there.  For the most part, as Isaiah the prophet described the coming Savior, centuries before the first Advent: 

He was despised and rejected by men;

a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief,

and as one from whom men hide their faces

he was despised, and we esteemed him not.  (Isaiah 53:3)

Jesus was treated as if he had no power, displaying his ultimate powerlessness by being crucified.

But in the second coming, that irony will be erased.  The one people considered powerless will be displayed with explosive and mighty power.  And then we will know.

The same Savior, coming two different times, in two entirely different ways, but with the same intention:  to set the people of this world free.

You Will Soon Be Set Free (part 2)

"You Will Soon Be Set Free"  (part 2)

Luke 21:25-26

What’s going to happen in the future?

Ten years ago, as you looked into the future, is today what you saw?  Is the person you are now the person you envisioned you would be from back then?  Is the world we live in now the world you envisioned 10 years ago?  What about 25 years ago?  50 years ago?

What’s going to happen this afternoon?  Tomorrow?  I try to keep a thorough calendar of future days.  I look at my calendar and it tells me what appointments and events will be coming up.  I look forward with anticipation to some of those events on my calendar.  Not so much anticipation with others.  But at least I know.  Each item on each day of my calendar is going to happen, right?

My calendar gives me a sense that the future is predictable.  Probably about 95% of the time, what I have on my calendar happens.  But there are times when things I didn’t expect to happen, happens.  Or things I expected to happen get canceled.  I get surprises.  Some times they aren’t good surprises.  I’m sure Betsy and Larry Koontz weren’t happy about coming home this week, surprised to see a huge branch crashed through their roof and into their bedroom.  Couldn't have seen that one coming, or had it on the calendar.  Most of the time events are just what they are.

We like to have a sense of control over our future.  We want that predictability.  Whenever we speak a sentence that begins with the words, “I will…” it has to do with what we want to happen in our future.

The futurist Robert Prehoda once wrote:

Unless you believe in a totally fixed and immutable time-stream (in which case it doesn’t matter what you do, everything’s frozen in cement already) then the future must be a series of events that have not yet happened, and therefore can be altered, changed, diverted, moved, shaped by myriad of individual decisions.  There is no one certain future; there are countless possible futures, with every moment bringing new opportunities to hand.

But, look back through this statement by Jesus and see how many times the word “will” comes up:

“Strange things will happen…”

“The nations on earth will be afraid…”

“People will be so frightened…”

“Every power in the sky will be shaken.”

“…the Son of Man will be seen, coming in a cloud…”

“You will soon be set free.”

Six times.

Let’s look at that word, “will” and what it infers.  Because from what Jesus said, it doesn't appear there are a lot of options.  If something “will” happen it means whatever is to happen is expected.  Not only expected—it’s supposed to happen.  There is no shade of doubt.  There is certainty.  There aren’t “countless possible futures,” as Prehoda wrote.  There is only one.

Also, behind these “will” statements of Jesus is a sense of determination.  Determined in two meanings of the word.  First, determined as in predestined.  If something will happen, and there is certainty about it happening, it means it is fated, or determined and fixed that it will happen.  And nothing will be able to derail that fate.  If it will happen, it has been set.

Determination also has the sense of volition behind it.  If I make an “I will” statement it means I am being deliberate in my choices and actions.  I am exercising my own purposes.  I am determined.  “I will make this happen.”

Coupled with that is fact that in order to say you will make such-and-such happen, you must have the power to make it happen.  I can’t say something like, “I will make Donald Trump close his mouth and drop out of the presidential election.”  I could show all the determination I want about that statement, but I just don’t have the power to pull it off.  So if you say you will do something, you better have the power to make it happen.

One other part of this statement Jesus makes about all the things that will happen has to do with design.  Some things will happen simply because that is the way they are designed.  That’s the feeling we get when we read Jesus’ six “will” statements—that this is the way the future is designed, and that future can’t do other than how it has been designed to play out.  Thus we get back to fate or determinism.  We may not like the way certain things about life are designed, but that’s tough.  There are some things about the design we don’t get to have a say in.

The ultimate destination of our future, or the future of the world, is one of those.  At least according to this statement of Jesus.

The other unsettling part of these six “will” statements is that they are open-ended.  We can be sure that they will happen.  We just don’t know when.  Most of our “I will” statements that we make we try to be close-ended.  “I will buy a different car next week.”  “I will write a book in 2016.”  “I will drink some oolong tea with my lunch today.”

Not so with Jesus’ statements.  The Second Coming, and these events, could start happening this afternoon.  Or 50 years from now.  It’s already been over 2000 years since Jesus made this statement.  So when?  We don’t know.

I was having breakfast with Alan and Rex Thursday morning at the Servateria.  A lady walked up to our booth and started preaching to us.  She said Jesus was going to come back soon because of all those blankety-blank Islamatists and what's happening in Jerusalem.  She said her husband told her to keep her mouth shut and I told her I might agree with him, but that the guys in the next booth over would love to hear what she had to say.  She moved on.

I admit, I was a bit crass.  But I get tired of people who say they know stuff about the Second Coming, when Jesus himself said he didn't know when it was going to happen.  We don't know.

The timing of either the first or second coming of Christ isn't what's important.  What is important is understanding the why of both the first and second coming.  And the why has to do with the kind of world that God is entering through Christ.

Look at how the world is described in these verses about the Second Coming.  Every power in the sky--sun, moon and stars--will shake.  In ancient times people believed the stars to be spiritual powers.  So even the powers in the skies, that had once been unmoving and constant, would suddenly become unstable.

The nations of the earth are living in fear and they won't know what to do about their fear.  Isn't our world currently being held in fear by terrorists, unstable and unruly nations ruled by unstable leaders?  The human-to-human atrocities are mind boggling!  We are bombarded with barbaric images from around our world of human cruelty and craziness.  Which city will be next?  Which innocent person will be next?  If we get used to those images or numbed to these inhuman actions, shame on us.

There is fear of climate change.  Of scarce water supplies.  Of antibiotic resistant bacteria.  And on and on.  The number one reality of our world is fear, and we have no idea what to do about it.

Fear is so bad, says these words of Jesus, that people will faint because of what's happening.  Imagine this prophetic picture portraying life prior to and during Christ's return.  As the events of his Second Coming unfold, a sense of dread, discouragement and perplexity closes down upon the world like the lid of a casket.

In one Peanuts cartoon, Snoopy is lying in his doghouse.  He is thinking to himself, "It's nice to wake up in the morning with a feeling well-being...to know that even though there's snow on the ground and it's a little chilly outside, basically life is good, and that you personally are..."  At that point, Snoopy stopped in mid-sentence and looked up.  Above him, hanging from the eave of the house, is one of the largest icicles he has ever seen.  Not knowing when it might fall on his little doghouse, Snoopy finishes his sentence, "...life is good, and that you are personally DOOMED!"

We have some of those kind of icicles hanging over our lives and over our world at the present time.  The unknowing of when they will fall paralyzes us from action or simple reaction.

As this Peanuts cartoon continues, Snoopy is looking up at the menacing spike of ice poised directly above him and his doghouse.  He's thinking to himself, "It's silly to be trapped in a doghouse by an icicle!"  Looking out straight ahead of him he continues to think, "I think I'll just make a run for it!  Just zoom out of here!"  The next frame shows Snoopy with a look of determination on his face as he talks to himself into making a bold move out of his precarious position:  "I think I'll just leap up and zoom right out!"  Then he looked up at the icicle and settles back down, feeling like a captive to his situation:  "I think I'll just lie here for the rest of my life!"

That's the dread that comes through the picture of the world at the time of Christ's second Advent.  The people of the world are discouraged and have a sense of bewilderment as to what is happening.  There is a certain reality that the people of the world are totally out of control--those who are the victimizers and those who are the victims.  The icicles over our lives and over the people of the world loom too large, and our avenues of escape seem to be all dead ends.  We give up.  We become fatalists.  We just lay down under our growing sense of doom.

On top of that is the image in these verses of the chaotic and untamed seas.  Throughout the Bible, the sea is a symbol for the troubled world.  The Psalmist cried out to God, "All thy breakers and thy waves have rolled over me" (Psalm 42:7).  And in another Psalm, David cried,

"Save me, O God, for the waters have threatened my life.

I have sunk where there is no foothold;

I have come into deep waters,

and a flood overflows me!"  (Psalm 69:1-2)

If anyone has swam in the ocean and felt the waves crash against them, they know what the psalmist is describing.  No matter how firmly you think you are standing, when that wave hits, you are down.  And you may feel the dangerous undertow tugging you down.  It's fun when you are playing with the waves.  It is not fun when they hit when you didn't expect it, or when they hit with such a ferocity that can knock the wind out of you for a time.

This is the picture of human life just prior to Christ's second Advent--wave upon wave of battering experiences, making the people of the world unable to get up before the next wave hits.  Our news is full of such waves.

This chaotic and untamable sea of human events makes us wonder where history is going.  When the rumors and possibilities of the icicle world events loom over us, we have the expectation that the worst is yet to come.  We just know it's all going to come crashing down upon us, so we just lay there, cringing, like Snoopy in the doghouse, overpowered by despair.

Is there any hope for us, for the people of our world?

In the final installment of Snoopy's icy predicament, Charlie Brown and Lucy put a pizza out on the snow.  Charlie Brown says to Lucy, "I'm doing just what the man from the humane society said to do."  Snoopy, laying in his doghouse sniffs the air catching the scent of the pizza.  Then, just as the icicle falls and destroys the doghouse, Snoopy zooms out to eat the pizza.  Charlie Brown and Lucy cheer, "SAVED BY A PIZZA!"  Snoopy thinks to himself, "Good Grief!"

Humanity won't be saved by pizza.  But salvation is on the way.