After thinking about it for a few weeks, here are some of the things that the gospel (the good news about who Jesus is and what he's done) has to say to the situation:
Inequality - the North/South divide
Fear - the need for security
Politics - look after your own voters
The answer?
While places like Hartlepool are seeing council funding cut, other places are cut significantly less or, in some cases, being given an increase.
Is more funding the answer to our problems? Is life better in the areas less affected by the cuts? On a superficial level, maybe the answer is yes. But dig deeper and we’ll see that it’s just papering over the cracks. The same inequality, the same fears about security and the same self-serving behaviour, just played out in a different location with better flowerbeds and weekly bin collections.
If you find yourself getting angry with your family, you can pack up down south, get a better job, better house, put the kids in better schools and the anger will still eventually surface. If you’re anxious about your food and shelter and start sliding into depression, somebody could give you money and somewhere to live and it will be a short term fix until you start getting anxious about losing it.
God's grace calls you to admit that your biggest problems are inside not outside you and gives you what you need to face what lives there.
— Paul David Tripp (@PaulTripp) October 30, 2013
My biggest problem is not an external circumstance but the fact that I am cut off from the author of life, putting me on a path towards death. The grass is not greener somewhere else, unless that “somewhere” else is Jesus. Life is best when lived with the Author of life.
picture by mercuryvapour