Comfortably Numb

As we approach the turn of yet another year, how are we feeling. For me it is not only the years that are flying by, but the decades as well, it does not seem to be nine years since the panic about the millennium bug was about. I for one do not do new years resolutions, well not since I found they were impossible to keep many years ago. So how am I feeling approaching 2009?

This is not a question about the general state of my health, which is fair to middling at the moment, more about a general state of mind. When you get to my age, you have seen and experienced many things, both good and bad. Since I left school nearly thirty years ago I have witnessed recessions, wars, natural disasters, man made disasters, starvation in countless different countries, and much more of a similar nature. I have also seen economic boom times, the release of Nelson Mandela, the fall of both communism and the Berlin Wall, and other good news stories.

The question is, how do we react to the stories we hear? In this day and age, there is 24 hour media saturation, of both "proper" news events, and of the cult of "personality". As I write the next Celebrity Big Brother is almost upon us, as if anyone really cares, and will undoubtedly fill the tabloids for the next few weeks.

I don't know about you, but I find myself almost becoming immune to the stories happening around me, both good and bad. It is if I have heard and seen it all before. You could say I have become comfortably numb. I need to be shaken out of my comfort zone, and be forced to react to the events that are happening around me. The world at the moment is in a mess. I need to see this and react with compassion and integrity. I need God to shake me to intercede in prayer. I need to seek God's truth amongst the siren calls of the world. I need to wait on God to find what His calling on my life is to be.

My prayer at the changing of the years is that none of us remain comfortably numb, but that we all strive to live the way God would want us to.

The title of this post is taken from the Pink Floyd song of the same name. This is a band which I used to not like at all, but have found growing on me in a big way in recent years. This clip is taken from their concert at Earls court in 1994.