Another holiday was coming up - you could tell by the overcrowded lines in the one supermarket of the city. The sounds of busy customers filled the air as people pushed past one another, shopping lists in hand. The two security officers exchanged tense looks as they communicated on their walkie-talkie systems; trying not to miss any shoplifting that was quite prevalent in this city. Yet what really caught my eye were the checkout counters; bottle after bottle of alcohol filled every one. I looked at the shopping carts of the people that surrounded me, and sure enough, alcohol filled more than half of the space there, too.

“Everyone’s been looking forward to this month,” the locals told me, “They couldn’t wait for the days off so that they could drink the time away…”

The empty alcohol rows in the market, the loud sounds coming from apartments, and the silhouettes shakily walking on the dimly lit streets at night testified to that sad truth. 

“Is this really all that Christmas means to them?”, I asked myself as I pictured what went on behind closed doors of homes in the already-miserably-dark, coal-mining city. “Is alcohol truly their only joy?”

And Scripture spoke to me. I opened John 10 and read through the “I am’s”… I am the door, the good shepherd, the Son of God… “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly…” John 10:10b

The grim faces and violent, alcohol-provoked behavior of the people that surround me underline the fact that they don’t have life. 

They don’t have life, so they don’t have joy. 

And they don’t have joy because they don’t know Christ.

Terrifyingly-simple.

Sobering.

A loud and clear call to action for us believers; 

“How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them…So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ…” Romans 10:14,17

For them to enter through His door, they must first hear. 

And if we do what Christ tells us, then, perhaps, in some time, another holiday will have less people in the city searching for joy at the bottom of a bottle.

Less people searching for joy because more of them will have already found it.