Long, long ago, there was a band, a seminal rock band called Cream.  Composed of Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, and Eric Clapton, Cream turned out a series of highly memorable songs.  One of them was called "World of Pain."  It tells a tale about people living in a world of pain, a world without remorse, care, or pity.  In language reminiscent of prophet Jeremiah’s lament over Jerusalem in the wake of its destruction at the hands of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE, its lyrics bewail the fate of a land, a land that although it was once grand, one of the great epochs of history, is now a land that is irrecoverably gone, a kingdom that will never return.  Its demise is permanent.  All who lived in it now mean nothing.



     In similar fashion, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road tells the story of a boy and his father who wander through a land devastated by what appears to be some form of nuclear holocaust.  It is a barbarous land, one torn by disorder and lawlessness, a world with no rules, structure, forgiveness, or commiseration.  It is every person for him or herself.  No one cares about anyone else.  Vigilantes and gangs control the roads, dealing brutally and harshly with anyone who dares use them, and killing and abuse are reduced to triviality and banality.  All human glory is gone.  Any memory of the world which has been lost is gone, too.  It’s no more than a nuance of the cortex.  It is a world which God never knew.
     So, apart from the person of Jesus and his life and death, is our world.  Whether you believe in Jesus or not, consider that without his life--and the fact of God behind it--we have no way, absolutely no way, to claim, independently of our random and finite selves, that this world means anything.  Should it?
     Yet we all want it to.  Otherwise, we are born, have fun and joy, then die.  The moments were grand, the years wondrous.  But now they're gone, forever.
     The truth that God made and died for the world, however, means that it is loved by more than itself and those in it:  it is loved by God.  Its worth is forever.