This week our nation has been rocked by the abhorrent attacks that took place in Bondi last Sunday. Fifteen innocent people, including a ten-year-old girl, gunned down while celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah (also known as ‘the Festival of Lights’). Forty-one wounded. Heartbroken families and friends in need of our love and prayers.  

Here in Australia we have, on the whole, been used to having a great deal of peace, freedom and stability. Yet recent years have seen tensions and rumblings, and rising antisemitism. We should constantly uphold our elected leaders in prayer. Pray they will have the courage and wisdom to make better decisions, in the best interests of all who want to live peacefully alongside others in our beautiful country.

But the main reason these sorts of atrocities occur in our world has nothing to do with politics or law-enforcement; it is a spiritual problem. The problem of sin and evil in the human heart. All of us have a fallen nature, and have rebelled against God in some way, shape or form. What took place in Sydney is but an extreme outworking of the darkness that actually exists in all of us.

There is a solution to this universal problem, and His Name is the Lord Jesus Christ. Over two thousand years ago during the Festival of Lights, Jesus declared, “I am the Light of the world. Whoever follows Me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” He came to pay for our sins by His death, so that we need not have the darkness of an eternity without God, and remain enslaved to sin on earth. Instead, all who trust in Him receive the free gift of eternal life, and new life here and now by His Spirit.

One day, Christ will return and deal with the darkness of sin and evil, and all who trust in Him will dwell in His light forever. May the Lord Jesus, the one true light, be our comfort and hope even in a dark world.