The rise in suicides shows us clearly the despair many feel in the world; they feel that life is not worth living. Many face situations which they cannot resolve and see no way out of the bottomless pits into which they have fallen. A breakdown in relationships, bereavement, poverty and hopelessness are often keys to the despair many feel. Despair can be defined as the absence of hope and without hope we all struggle to find meaning in life.
For the Christian, however, we know that despair does not have the last word. Easter is very much a time of despair: betrayal, injustice, pain, loss and sorrow are with us as we travel through the last week of Jesus’s life on earth. Yet we persist in remembering the day of Jesus’s crucifixion as ‘Good Friday’: not because we celebrate the victory of men over an innocent man, but because we know Jesus gave Himself willingly as a sacrifice for sin and that Good Friday is not the end of the story. The reason we can eschew despair is because Jesus rose from the dead and is alive forevermore and therefore we have hope in even the darkest situations.
