What do we need?

What do we need for Christmas?

It depends upon whom

you ask.

In answer to the

question of “What does this country need?” someone long ago said, “What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar.”

Another person answered, “What this country needs is a car that won’t run faster than the driver can think.”

Obviously, everyone has an answer to the question of what do we need.

A song from the 1960s has an answer: “What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.”

The singer makes a statement to God about what we don’t need: ”Lord, we don’t need another mountain, there are mountains and hillsides enough to climb.”

Again the singer makes a comment to God: “Lord, we don’t need another meadow; there are corn fields and wheat fields enough to grow. There are sunbeams and moonbeams enough to shine; Oh, listen Lord if you want to know, what the world needs now is love, sweet love.”

The Lord is not ignorant; he already knows what the world needs now. It needs the same thing it has always needed and the same thing it will ever need. The world needs a savior.

Yes, a savior is what we need, and a savior is what God sent us.

This is what the angel said to the shepherds, “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:11)

As God looks down upon us, the only thing he sees wrong with us is our sin. It is our sin that separates us from God, and it is sin that will keep us out of heaven.

So, the Christmas message and the message of the Bible is the same message that the Apostle Paul preached: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst.” (1 Timothy 1:15)

The Rev. David Parry, pastor at First Church of God in Seymour, 625 E. Fourth St., writes a column for The Tribune.