“If you look around the World this Christmas, it’s a pretty bleak place, without much hope”. Those are words I’m hearing quite often. There’s the pandemic; the war in Ukraine; global warming; inflation; people not being able to pay their bills. People are saying they are afraid of what’s going to happen next!
I find myself thinking, “I can’t disagree with that”.
However, last night in the midst of all this negativity, for a little while, I saw a different world as well. A world where there’s no shouting or bombing or war, but a loving world. One which can take your breath away.
It occurred in one of Sydney’s hundreds of old town halls. It was not an earth shattering event with an immediate outcome, but my guess is something similar was happening in hundreds of thousands of places all around the globe. Individually, each doesn’t count for much, but collectively, a different story is being told.
Something wonderful happened
At this town hall I had noticed the beautiful young girl in the pretty red dress. She was being guided to her seat. She was obviously blind and was being led by her mother, who was making sure she didn’t bump into anything or trip over.
A little while later she was helped on stage and seated behind a keyboard. That took quite a while and it was awkward to watch as the stage was a strange environment to her and she needed to be seated properly. There was a lot of fiddling about with positioning the microphone so that she could sing into it properly while her fingers stroked the keyboard.
This girl began to sing and everyone in the hall fell silent, listening.
She was so, so good!
A few songs later she was joined by a young boy who was also blind. He had the same condition, the only difference being he played the guitar.
His voice was equally good. In other words, breathtaking!
Now, the two were singing a duet to a gobsmacked audience. Suddenly, all their “disabilities“ vanished, and they and the crowd became one in a prolonged existential now.
It was obvious both of these young people had lived challenging lives, and it showed in their choice of songs. However, they did not let their disabilities define them. Indeed, they ignored them or worked around them, and the audience did too.
Hope filled my world
What a picture of hope these two projected! They showed us first hand we can all be masters of our own destiny.
They show us that even when the world is a dark place, beauty is knocking on the door to be let in. You only have to hear the knocking.
This Christmas we can all be overcome with the big picture negative stuff and not see the beauty in our own backyard.
So this Christmas I will be looking for those signs of hope which I bet are actually all around, wherever we look.
