Christmas Speech.

We are witnesses of corruption all around us. It takes over humanity. Flows into every part of society. Slowly but surely destroying it.

We live it everyday. It comes in different forms and ways. Sometimes we can’t even name it as such. We see it at the state level, with the government officials. It’s present in every institution.

Can you remember one situation where you’ve been witness of it and it has entangled or complicated your life and made extra problems for you?!

For example at the University. How many times you were a victim of the chaotic system at your university? You had to wait too long to finish your assignments for the next semester, or the employees at the info desk yelled at you because you were missing a document, or you had to give bribe to a particular professor because he asked you and wouldn’t give you the grade you wanted without it? Or how hard it is to live in an undignified conditions in your dormitory/halls? Do you ever miss hot water in the shower or toilet paper? Or did you ever have a decent lunch and dinner?

It seems like the government has forgotten you, the students, the most important generation for the near future of the country. It seems like they care only for their offices and transportation and glasses of water for their speeches at the rostrum.

Do you find it difficult to ensure your monthly budget and pay the fee for your dormitory and faculty, or for your phone? Maybe your parents struggle to provide to both of you and your siblings decent life and opportunity to study. And the system is blind and deaf for you. You can not go and appeal to your university, or find job and study at the same time.

And even worse, what about when you finish studies and try to find job? Then you might face another challenge such as “somebody else took your job. Somebody who had a friend or relative at the institution where you applied and he/she got the job only because they were connected in a way”.

And I am sure it frustrates you and disappointed you and made you wanna go away from Macedonia and start a better life somewhere on the West. Somewhere where everybody will value your endeavour, your education and you as a whole person. In a place where the care for people is evident and where there is no indifference.

You might say “I am enough of this country whose politicians care only for their positions and not for the position of their people”. Maybe Germany, Italy or England. I don’t know.

But I think that actually the whole world is corrupted. No matter the place, the country, the environment, the job or the level of education of its people.

Forever and ever people have been suffering from each others choices and acts. From the beginning of the world people made a choice to walk the more difficult road. The road of selfishness, evil ambition, deceitfulness, vanity and indifference. That was the famous fall of the man. When people said: “we are enough to ourselves, we can do it alone”.

“People’s indifference is the best breeding ground for corruption to grow” - Delia Ferreira: Transparency International.

And the Bible says: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it”? This clearly shows us that we can not trust even our own heart, so it won’t bear fruit if we put our hope of the better in other people’s positions, power, influence and whatever so..

Wherever we go we can not escape the fact that people, the building unit of the society are not perfect and we can not and must not put our hopes in them for better life, future...

Imagine you move abroad and all of sudden you start to face with problems at work, or you work too much and don’t have time to see your friends and family? Then you become unsatisfied again. Now it is not because you are not being valued or because of lack of money, it’s because you don’t have time to share your life with other people.

Then you understand it’s not the money, nor the people, nor the town where you live, nor the university at which you study. There is something more that is missing and you don’t know what that is. It calls you, disturbs you but you can not really know what is that.

WHAT IS MISSING?

One famous author from Roman Empire time, said:

“Our heart is restless until it rests in you” - Saint Augustine

This is the most compelling evidence for the existence of God.

So, this Christmas season, when all of us are going to be reminded of that day when Christ was born. Why don’t you pay Him more of your attention? Find out for yourself why Christ was born on the Earth? Why did He come like a baby? What was His mission?

Turn to Him and you might not have to go to the West to find your rest, you might find it in Him. You might find out that your destination is not your job, our your family and friends, it is something else.

By Katerina Koleva.