You Are Choosing to Live
WHY are you now breathing? Because you choose to live. You will drink some water today, because you choose to live. You will eat some food today, because you choose to live. For the same reason you will sleep tonight, to renew energy for living tomorrow. And when you wake up, you will go to work, whether you like your job or not. You will go to provide the necessities of life.
However, take a look at this present life you are choosing. Take a look at the racial divisions that cause some to feel superior and to oppress those they think inferior. Look at the injustice and violence and even wars that result because skins are colored differently.
Look at the nationalism that divides the peoples of earth, the revolutions that split nations and create floods of refugees, the bickering political parties that squabble and fight, the corruption that robs the people and fattens the politicians’ purses.
Do not overlook the role that popular religions play. They divide people, meddle in politics, frequently foment wars and many times persecute the true worshipers of Jehovah God. So many “Christians,” so little Christianity!
Do not stop looking with these big failures on the world scene. Look at the slums in every big city, the poverty, the filth, the loathsome disease, the hopeless inhabitants huddled in dark tenements, freezing in winter or sweltering in summer. Crime-ridden streets, red-light districts, dope addiction, mental institutions jammed with tragic victims.
Worldwide a moral breakdown plagues the seas of humanity. Everywhere you look you can read the hopelessness and despair written on millions of faces. It all totals up to a worldwide epidemic called stress. It has been called the Twentieth Century Killer. A Wall Street Journal report claimed: “Severe or prolonged stress can make the body more vulnerable to ailments ranging from skin rashes and the common cold to heart attacks and cancer.” A report in To the Point stated: “The physical ills [that stress] generates now contribute to a vast number of hospital cases and deaths each year—at least tens of millions.”
This current increase of stress fulfills a prediction of centuries ago. “On the earth,” Jesus said there will be “anguish of nations, not knowing the way out.” He then added: “Men [will] become faint out of fear and expectation of the things coming upon the inhabited earth.”—Luke 21:25, 26.
The two pages that follow focus your attention in more detail on specific features of this stressful life many are choosing by eating, sleeping and working.