everywhere. Drug wars raging across Mexico. People going on killing sprees in Europe and the US. Rape squads rampaging through the Congo and Rwanda. Poverty everywhere you look. Even in the US - the land of hope and glory - the streets are full of homeless people, many of them mentally ill, and literally millions are out of work. Yeah, it's a hard, hard world. It's enough to cause a person to lose hope, to think that maybe there's no reason to go on, to decide to end it all, and many do. The Christmas season always sees a spike in suicides. I don't think this year will be any different. Yeah, it's pretty cold out there. And yet, there is still a lot of good in this tired old world. It's there if you look for it. Trouble is, we often get so blinded by all of the garbage that we don't see the flowers growing in the pavement cracks. But the flowers are there. I have a friend whose 
son died in a terrible accident. His wife broke her back. All of his other kids were seriously injured and spent weeks in the hospital. It was tragic. But amid the tragedy, wonderful things occurred. Word got out. People came and helped him build a new bedroom and bathroom on the lower floor of his house, because his wife couldn't get upstairs anymore. Most of the material was donated by individuals or local businesses. The town they live in held a fund-raiser for them. The city changed an ordinance to allow them to bury their son on their property. Good things happen in this world. But - and here's the rub - it was people who made these good things happen for my friend. People. Individuals. Us.When bad things happen, people will often shrug their shoulders and say, "That's just the way the world is." I hate that statement. It's defeatist. When someone says that to me, I always respond to them, "No, that's the way we've made the world." And it's true. We made the world a hard place to live. Only we can make it better. Do I sound like some foolish dreamer? Maybe I am. But it's a fact. If each and every one of us did something every day to make someone else's life a little brighter, this world would be a little less hard. And it's easy to do. Hold a door open for someone. Let someone get in line in front of you. Visit an elderly relative or friend. Introduce yourself to your neighbors. Bake some brownies
and give them to someone who's down. Drop a box of food on the doorstep of someone who's in need. Throw a little money into the kettle outside the store. Drop a can of beans into the food drive box. None of these things are hard. None of them take a lot of time. Or a lot of money. Heck, a smile costs nothing at all.In the Christian world, we are about to celebrate Christmas. We are about to celebrate the birth of the Son of God, the only perfect man who ever lived on the earth. He came into a cruel and benighted world to show us all a better way to live. He taught us not only to "Love thy neighbor as thyself," but also to "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them which despitefully use you." Tough words to live by, to be sure, but think what kind of a world we would be living in if everyone tried to live by those words. It would be a little less hard, a little less cold. Now, at this Christmas time, we remember that the angels
sang of peace on earth, goodwill toward all. We give gifts to those we love. We try to act just a little bit nicer in keeping with the "Christmas spirit." We recall the words of the ghost of Jacob Marley in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. "Mankind was my business," he cried. "The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business." May we all remember this, that the welfare of all humanity is our business. We all are our brothers' and sisters' keepers. Keep that in mind, and the world will be a little warmer place, even in the dead of winter.
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