But it’s not so easy. Shy, elusive inspiration. Sometimes it is nowhere to be found. Creativity can neither be captured in time nor wrangled to a list. It evades any attempt to harness it, resists any attempt at force. Instead it can only be coaxed out, patiently drawn from hiding, the bullies of agenda and clock and past and future sent indefinitely away. It’s painstaking work. And all can be lost in an instant with one move, one move that’s a hair too quick or a nudge too forceful. And the coaxing must begin all over again.

I’ve no patience for it tonight, though for it I am so hungry. I am too busy to play its games. I miss it and its intoxicating highs. But it makes me stop too long. It requires too much. Boredom is too expensive to indulge so freely. To cosset this muse is to barter and steal, to trade necessities like sleep and work. I cannot always make the sacrifice. So, like a peevish child, the muse is silent. And I sit before a blinding emptiness, nursing my bad temper at these games I’m made to play. Damn the game. Damn the art. Damn the words and the stupid page.

Hide if you want. Or come and find me, if you dare.

Cooperation. Friendliness. Two traits that in tandem make a difference both for the travelers and the agents who have to deal with them. When an agent’s day can go like this, it makes a more pleasant day for everyone.

The converse is also true. One fowl attitude can ransack the whole travel experience. The woman in front of me on one plane was boasting about her behavior on her last flight. She was seated in front of a family with small children who were apparently kicking her seat. The woman said, “I had to give those parents a training lesson on how to parent. When I told them about managing their kids, the dad answered, ‘They’re just kids.’” She went on to describe her response to that. The next time her seat got kicked, she yelled and tossed part of her drink over the back of her seat on the family behind. “I figured,” she concluded, “that if they were going to make my flight miserable, I may as well make theirs miserable too.”

It’s hard to travel with kids. This I know well. It’s hard for kids to behave perfectly when their normal sleep and eating schedules are thrown off by travel. It’s hard for parents to parent perfectly when they’re tired too and just trying to survive the trip. And I’m even one who thinks that as a generation, we’re doing a pretty poor job of raising kids to be respectful, polite and self-disciplined!

Sometimes we parents give in to a kid’s demands knowing full well that it’s rewarding their bad behavior, reasoning it will get them to be quiet and not bother the lady in front of them. Yet I also know, as a parent (and not an awesome one at that), the job isn’t about getting kids to behave perfectly in public but about teaching them how. And there’s a difference. Trying to get kids to behave perfectly in public focuses only on the moment at hand and cares only about immediate results. But teaching kids means enduring the public humiliation of the moment and using it as yet another teaching opportunity. It’s looking at the long-term results, not the short-term gain.

This is the burden of parenting kids who must one day leave home and be constructive human beings. It’s not always easy. And when a feisty passenger in the seat in front of you tosses unsolicited criticism and soda at you and your family because your child is acting like a kid instead of a constructive adult, it’s spirit crushing. It’s demoralizing. And it just doesn’t help anyone.

But it’s like a salve on an open sore when an empathetic bystander takes the time to say, “Honey, I know it seems crazy now, but these days will pass. It’s hard work but keep it up. Don’t worry about what everyone else around you is thinking. You’re doing okay.”

The woman in front of me, boasting of her parent-training techniques, didn’t know what the gate agent knew. She didn’t trust that a family might be trying really hard to keep everyone happy. She failed to comprehend how an empathetic word could have bolstered that little family’s spirits and made the whole trip a whole lot more pleasant – for everyone. She failed to see the irony of her own childish behavior, throwing her soda at children to teach them a lesson.

For any time I saw a child whining or throwing a hissy fit in public and quietly judged the parents, I am so sorry. I hope to be an encourager. I hope to be cooperative and friendly, one who lifts a spirit instead of tearing one down. I hope to be the kind of person who behaves better than the myriad of grown-up children acting badly on airplanes, then boasting about it.

(And I’m climbing off my slippery little soapbox now.)

A Minute of Margin by Richard Swenson, M.D. 

 

Thanks to Richard Swenson’s book (above), the recent death of my i-phone and the fact that it’s December, a month that has the capacity to upend my calendar, complexity is on my mind.

Each day the world becomes more complicated. The automatic, default direction of progress is toward escalating complexity. Much of this trend is to our liking, for we delight in sophisticated, impressive hardware, whether space shuttles, supercomputers, artificial hearts, or global positioning satellites.

But there is another aspect to this story. Complexity can bless, but it also can irritate. And most of us do not need a larger irritation burden complicating our already overloaded lives. At such times we might consider strong, determined, selective moves to keep our lives, our schedules, and our technology within a range of acceptable complexity.

-Richard Swenson

It’s December, and Thursday is the kindergarten musical. Last Thursday was the 6th grade chorus concert. Saturday is the ballet recital that follows soccer practice and precedes the office Christmas party. A new work project just started. Life needs careful managing, and my new phone still lacks some “apps” to help me manage that life remotely. There’s a level of complexity to life and, in particular, life in December. On top of the events and the usual task lists, we all know there’s Christmas shopping and planning to do. Decorating. Cooking. Getting ready for company. The phone reminders are chiming hourly, an attempt to keep things from falling through the cracks, things that exceed my capacity to manage them. This is a month of noise and great expectations. And in the din of all that noise is a Christmas tree quietly reminding me there’s something more important going on than all these calendar items — if I could just slow down long enough to listen.

When the alarm sounds in the morning, I hit snooze. Ten more minutes of suspended time. It’s not because I have nothing to do in this month of December, this year of Decembers. It’s because I want to be quiet just a little bit longer, before the day begins to dictate my time instead of me. I feel guilty when I choose “snooze” over “off” because I reason that getting up an hour earlier would help me manage all this complexity better. But in reality, one hour is not enough to do that. No calendar or chart or phone reminder can completely manage the flurry of activity that is life in all its complexity. Trying is like herding cats. So I postpone the inevitable. Ten more minutes.

This morning I hit snooze 6 times. So when I did finally get out of bed it was to wake groggy little bodies to get ready for school. There wasn’t time to sit on the edge of the bed next to my seven year old, snuggled up in his fluffy blanket and wake him gently, enjoying the serenity of a child’s face at rest. Instead I had to rush him. He needed to move quickly to be ready in time today. But it was really just me that needed to move quickly, and I drew my child from his world of sleepy wonder into mine, an adult world where schedules harass and efficiency reigns. If we were perfectly efficient, I reasoned, we could still make it to school in time. I put all the burden of my calendar on the shoulders of children and goaded them out the door, past that quiet, glistening Christmas tree that may have been whispering something if I’d had the time to listen. I was busy herding my cats and regretting the snare of the snooze button.

But snooze buttons can be more than a snare depending on how you look at them. As I stop to write this, as the room grows quiet around me, I am pushing my mid-day snooze button. I’m silencing the task list for a moment. Instead I’m taking ten minutes to think about the people behind the tasks, the names associated with the events on my calendar. I’m pushing snooze on all those lists so I can listen to the whispers of Christmas. And Christmas is whispering its gifts. Simple gifts. That snooze button can be a window too, letting the light of God’s love and grace shine on my December.

I love Richard Swenson’s book because in just a couple of minutes each day (the book is written as 180 daily “reflections”), I can be reminded that complexity comes at a price, and those moments when we put our gear into overdrive to get everything done are meant to be temporary. We shouldn’t live our lives in overdrive even though much of the time we do. My kids don’t live that way. When my kids get home from school today, after they finish the homework and we determine the school has had enough of them for the day, they’ll play. They’ll be building things, pretending things, laughing, joking.They’ll be whispering about Christmas with wistful grins. They’ll be waiting at the window for the neighbors to get home so they can pick up the play where they left off yesterday.

They have gears for rest and play and work. They don’t have to push a snooze button (though they may want to push mine).

My i-phone started dying last week. Maybe I should have recognized its feeble cries for help, the apps that looked as though they were trying to open only to fade back to a confused menu screen. First it was Google. Then it was Instagram. Then Reader. One by one its apps were closing their eyes to me. Then two nights ago, with a newly charged battery coursing through its electronic veins, it powered itself down for good.

I’m mad at it. I think it should have warned me. If I’d known, I could have acted. I could have saved my family memories, my extensive notes, my account information and a list of all the apps which have become as much a part of my day as putting on clothes and eating. But it stole off into the night with everything, and some things just can’t be replaced.

It Draws You In

I can tell you the exact day I got hooked on that phone. I clearly remember saying, “I don’t need a fancy phone. I barely even use my phone. Half the time I don’t even remember to turn it on.” I didn’t want to be one of those junkies who was always distracted by her phone, by its enticing “notifications” and alerts. But friends had started to send me text messages, and it was costing me 60 cents a pop. Then one day, standing in the AT&T store with my husband as he purchased the i-phone 4, I took into my hands his handed-down 3, already a generation behind. “Don’t give me a big data plan. I won’t use it,” I said. But the universe may have shuddered at that. I may have felt the tremor in my soul. I may have realized then there was no turning back, even as I blurted out those useless words that would hold as much resolve as a spoonful of pudding.

It Seeps Into the Bones

I didn’t know then how this flat, glowing wonder would seep into the bones of my existence, how it would organize my life and my thoughts. I’d no idea then how it would become to me a source of endless information or how it would provide answers to an infinite list of questions. It would tell me in two minutes what was going on in the lives of hundreds of friends. It would give me pictures of my kids on bike rides with their dad. It would scan all my favorite news sources and blogs and synthesize them for me in a digestible portion. It would give me the freedom to blog while lying in a hammock next to the pool. It would eliminate the need for planning all kinds of things. I didn’t need to look at a map to find the best route for the next road trip because it could do that for me on the road. I no longer needed to remember anyone’s phone number because it did the remembering for me. I didn’t need to remember to charge up the camcorder or camera in preparation for the kids’ events because if I forgot, I always had my phone to do it for me. I could go out of town and still access and respond to important emails. I could basically run my life from anywhere — the car, the store or the hammock.

It Changes Your Life

Basically it changed the way I live my life, for better or for worse. I know that because I have been a chaotic, anxious, disorganized wreck since Sunday night when my attempts to resuscitate it failed. I feel like I go through the day with one hand tied behind my back. It is as though I’ve lost a limb. And when the store wouldn’t replace it with another i-phone for lack of stock, when they talked me into something else, I came home with an unfamiliar and clunky thing. I hate it. I hate it for making me think, putting me through hoops to try and find what I want. I hate that I have to teach it everything that my old phone knew without being told. I hate that its ring is annoying and that it will take me time to find its settings because they’re buried under a poorly designed interface that taunts me to find anything. It’s a harassment.

I’m annoyed, and I’m getting nothing done. So since I have to work to re-train this big, black ugly phone while the stacks of things to do continue to pile, why not blog and whine to you? Because not only am I annoyed with the new phone, I regret the way I let the old one worm its way into my life so indelibly that I can’t seem to function without it. And I’m ashamed that in the midst of so many more important people and events in my life, I’m spending my energy on something my grandmother would have viewed as a luxurious annoyance, an obstacle to getting work done. I guess I can see her point. But I want my i-phone hit and BAD. I’m a junkie after all.

On the fumes of the night, I found a blog. And on the first hit, I was hooked. Sentences swung back and forth like a hypnotist’s watch. Time faded. And a blog I did devour. It was heaven, and I remembered something about good writing. A good writer makes me want to write. Her art is in letters, in making them into story. A good writer is not afraid to look bad to her audience. She doesn’t take herself too seriously. And she writes her life, however sad or comic or seemingly insignificant, through a lens of redemption and grace.

As I reflect on my favorite writers, the ones I most admire, the ones who most inspire me, I realize something else. The writer writes to fail just as much as to succeed. It is the risk she absorbs every time she sits to write. In writing she merges her pain with her bliss and welcomes her reader to a momentary world where he can make sense of his own. Oh, and we love her, love her so much we steal from her. We’ll take her thoughts and re-word them into the sentence of our own life until they become ours as much as they were ever hers.

It is good to remember why I write. I write because I enjoy it. Sometimes I’m inspired by an unexpected emotion or thought, but almost always it is words themselves that lure me out onto the ice of empty page. They have great power over me, both to buoy me and to draw out from me a story that, though mine, has a benefactor in many. I cannot write without the muse of other writers. They are “qualified” because they write. They write to me. And my qualifications are: that I write too.

Tonight I remind myself that inspiration is not far. I make myself remember. Because morning will come, and in my bleary, caffeine-starved struggle to rouse, I won’t be so verbal, won’t remember where to find my muse. The spell will have broken. Letters will scatter on a blank page. And new work will have to be done to create a coherent story.

I chose not to watch security camera footage posted on the web, but I read the articles that described the events it captured. Last week little Wang Yue wandered unnoticed by her parents into the street and was hit by a van. After knocking the girl down, the driver of the van stopped and then proceeded to drive over her body with the back wheels of his car. A second vehicle, this time a small truck, ran over the little girl without slowing. Ten minutes passed during which persons walked, cycled and drove around the child as she lay in a puddle of blood on the street. It was a woman scavenging garbage nearby who set down her sacks and pulled the little body off the street to get help.

Unthinkable, horrible, tragic and enraging, the incident caused public outrage. In an online “Stop Apathy” campaign, persons around the globe vented their disgust at the dozen-plus derelict individuals who completely ignored the injured and helpless little toddler. It would be easy join the outcry except that I know the quote at the end of Platoon is true: the enemy is within us. We are the derelict. We are the apathetic.

Most of the public voices reveal a self-righteous anger, the kind that is quick to say, “I would never do such a thing,” or “If I had been there, I would have stopped and helped.” It is as though our anger and outrage defends us against a more insidious truth, that at the core we are just as despicable as the ones who did nothing. We don’t want to believe that we could do what those people did. We don’t want to believe that we are just as indifferent and apathetic. And yet, we are proved that way over and over again. In just one example, when a hidden camera was set up at a busy street corner in one U.S. city and a small child actor placed at the corner, the camera recorded dozens of people passing her by. One woman, at last, stopped to find out why this young child was left alone in the middle of the city. It takes a cursory look at the day’s news to face the reality that our condition is despicable even though we want to believe otherwise.

Christ challenges our assumption that we are good, that given the opportunity, we would stop and help the one in need. Jesus told a story. A man on a journey is accosted and beaten by thugs, left to die on the side of the road. The pious, the “good” folks of the world pass him by, like the dozen-plus in China passed by little Wang Yue. I’m sure they had their reasons. “I didn’t see her.” “I figured her family would be coming to help her.” “I didn’t know she was hurt that badly.” “I thought it was a bloody blanket.” “I wouldn’t have been able to help. I figured surely someone was already getting help.” Who knows what the excuses are, but somehow they reasoned out justifications in their minds and passed by. And I’m sure they all regret that now. My guess is they are mostly “decent” people leading mostly “decent” lives. But in the end, the majority of people pass by. Only one stops. And the one who stops isn’t the “good” or “pious” of our society, but the nobody, the cast off. In China, it was a scavenger, a woman who collects scraps from the garbage. In Jesus’ convicting story, it’s a Samaritan, one who is despised and of no repute.

And the compassion of those we disregard as nothing shames us all. We are exposed for who we really are, derelicts indeed. It is in our fallen nature to look out for our own interests over the interests of others. We shout out our disgust at these twelve passersby and two drivers, but it is at ourselves too. As we cry for justice, we know deep down inside we betray our own indifference. And we are filled with shame because our record proves we are not the good Samaritans we’d like to think we are.

My husband shared an interesting image with me. In the musical The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland, the munchkins gather around the body of the wicked witch singing, “Ding-dong, the witch is dead.” He was ruminating on the recent celebration over the death of Muammar Gaddafi (similar to celebrations over the death of Osama bin Laden) and likening it to this scene in The Wizard of Oz. Except that, in his tweaked version, the munchkins are witches. They sing gleefully at the death of the sinister and evil witch totally unaware that they themselves are also witches. I like his version. It seems closer to the truth.

We want to be the good Samaritan, but on our own we fall desperately short. Stories like Wang Yue’s remind us every day that we are not what we hoped we are. We’re attracted to heroes because we know that heroic acts of love and compassion, of forgiveness and restoration don’t come naturally. We know that, if left to our own devices, our tendency is to walk by on the other side of the road. But if we deny the evil inside of us, the enemy within, we may deceive ourselves but not God. We are still in desperate straits.

We need a tonic. We need good news. And oh sweet, intoxicating Gospel: it is just that. Jesus is our Good Samaritan, entering our tragedy and healing our brokenness with a balm for the derelict and despicable. Where we are unable to make ourselves the good Samaritans we aspire to be, he is able. He can turn us from passerby to an agent of compassion. But we can’t come to him with the notion that we have anything to offer, that we’re better than a passersby in China who abandoned a little girl in her need. We have to come with hands empty of our own credit. We have to see ourselves as the derelicts we are. We have to identify with the driver of that van or that truck, with the man who walked by the bleeding toddler because we are no different, no better. It could have been us walking by. It was us walking by. Do we have the courage to believe it? Or are we hanging onto a self deception and refusing the cure?

May our shared shame lead us to a sweet Gospel: Jesus loves the derelict. He became the derelict on the cross, bearing our shame for us. In him, there is no more shame, no more condemnation for the evil within. He loves the passersby. There is no bottom to his forgiveness, no end to the flow of his love for the humble and contrite. Little Wang Yue is no farther from his grace and love than are we. Praise be to God. May a little child lead us to Jesus. Because we need him. Each and every one of us.

In late September, 1988 I was a sophomore at Wheaton College. The air was alive with fall, colors were exploding on trees, students chatty and excited about new classes. The sweatshirts had been dug out of the bottom of dresser drawers. We were starting to order coffee, hot tea and hot chocolate at the Stupe, the campus snack bar. We were adjusting to new professors and their expectations. We’d barely gotten notice of our assigned chapel seats when Dr. Arthur Holmes took the stage in what would become inseparable from the culture of our shared four undergraduate years, the “Isms, Ists & Anti-ism-ists” message he delivered to roughly 2,000 of us in Edman Hall. I don’t think a single student in my graduating class forgets it. Honestly, I couldn’t have told you what that address was about, but I always remembered its title. We students would forever associate that phrase with any mention of the philosophy department or Dr. Holmes.

I just learned that Dr. Holmes passed away Saturday at the age of 87, long after retiring as Chair of the Philosophy Department at Wheaton. I went searching for that chapel address today. I wish I’d known then what I know now. I wish I had realized then how rich I was to benefit face to face from minds like his (and others). He was a voice in pursuit of the integration of faith and learning, a strong encourager of thinking for oneself. In his constructive development of thinking minds, he countered anti-intellectualism in the American church. Yet he did so gently, patiently and graciously. In that famous chapel address, he challenged Christians living in a pluralistic society with its “-isms” and its “-ists” to remain constructive:

Don’t spend all your energies fighting error when you should be affirming truth. Don’t major in one-upmanship, trying to outsmart the “ism” and its “ists.” Don’t become an anti-ism-ist … known for what you’re against. But let people know what you’re for, and be ready to give a reason for it, for the hope that is in you. And let’s not let disagreement with an “ism” become a personal vendetta against the “ism-ists.” We should respect the people God made in his own image however much they abuse the truth. We should honor our enemies, Christ’s enemies too. All too many crusaders for truth sound like close-minded militant people haters. So we need to be gracious, more dialogical and less dogmatic, patient. And in that spirit, let’s get on with the constructive tasks to which we’re called, building a way of life that is faithful to the truth…

His gentle, thoughtful voice in its rich English accent penetrated 20-plus years of distance and reminded me of the blessing he has been to those of us who brushed shoulders with him. I feel very thankful God created Arthur F. Holmes and opened his mouth to teach a generation of North American Christians, some of whom, hopefully, just hopefully are up to that constructive work today — not tearing down in accusation and witch hunting over what’s “right” but living a Gospel that leads to our reconciliation with God and our fellow man.

Because we fear failure.
Because we fear success.
Because we fear autonomy.
Because we fear being alone.
Because we fear attachment.

So that’s why I haven’t caught up on the laundry and am 3 (or so) months behind on reconciling bank statements! I fear success, failure, autonomy, being alone and attachment.

Ahh, smile.

Please don’t be offended, everyone who teaches, uses and benefits from the discipline of psychology: but aren’t we sometimes just lazy? Sometimes don’t we just want to be entertained instead of focused on work? I mean, I do. Am. I don’t feel like going through the boxes in the garage even though doing so would mean I could park a car in there. I’m waiting for an energy from on high that hasn’t yet struck (surprise). So there sit the boxes and here in the chair sits my butt. I don’t think I’ll fail at the job or be too successful to handle it. I don’t think I’m afraid of the independence it might display or the fact that I’d be alone (for a mom, alone can be a very sweet word). And, I really don’t quite understand the attachment angle enough to comment on that.

When I cut through all the reasons (excuses) for not doing something, the naked truth staring back at me is that I just don’t want to.

And it’s fun to procrastinate by looking up the word and poking fun at someone’s attempt to dissect it.

Shame.

Well, I’m gonna get off my butt and get moving.

But first, I’m stopping in the kitchen to see if there’s anything to eat.

Change enters our streets. Decisions alter life’s course. And the heart follows in transition. Like a pair of worn-in jeans that finally meet their end, the past is cast off. With movements lithe and rhythmic, that cast off life had felt just like my own skin. But the new jeans of a new house and hood resist my skin and the movement of my limbs. It is a strain to make this new fabric move for and not against.

For me, the tears come simply from change – not bad change, just change. And I mourn the loss of a neighborhood, the loss of easy friendships for my kids, the names and faces of our old street. I miss knowing the insides of the houses where my kids played. I miss the neighborhood kids who knocked on the door and played in the front yard. I miss the hound dog next door, the one that kept escaping and then miraculously reappearing. I miss my quiet animal-loving neighbor and the son in the wheelchair who passed away this year. I miss my neighbors with the grey hair, the ones whose age and wisdom added perspective to the streetscape of life. I miss the crazy lady across the street, now long passed, who used to wander half-dressed in front of our house when her wits at last gave way (trying to coax her back inside her house was always a challenge, a challenge that made life in a neighborhood colorful and uniquely our own). I miss the feisty neighbor who battled a chronic and ultimately terminal illness. She yelled at me one day for letting my contractor drive a front loader up and down the street and yet took so much joy in dangling seasonal decorations from the tree at the start of the street, that we fondly dubbed her the tree fairy. And I even miss that tree, that sad little Crepe Myrtle that kept getting knocked over by a school bus trying to navigate its median. Every time it would recover, it seemed it would get knocked over again.

I glance out the windows of a new house, across a new street. It’s a pretty street with lots of neighbors and kids and dogs and sidewalks. We’re beginning to know some names. The barefoot little girl, padding one-footed down the sidewalk has a name, some sisters and parents we’ve met. The boy next door knows my Ellie and invites her to play. I have plans to meet up with some women on the street for lunch tomorrow, new names to learn. I don’t but do want to go. I just hate starting all over again. And these new jeans I’m wearing are still feeling stiff. One day they’ll work for me, but today I’m really missing the old ones.

In my broadcast writing class in college we learned the term “news judgment,” that process by which editors determine the stories that will get the most air time or page real estate in the daily paper. News judgment seems an attempt to match current events with what media moguls think Americans most want to hear (ie, match which news will most prompt Americans to look or click or resist changing channels). I can’t help but notice a theme. We must seem an incredibly fearful lot. We must seem mostly concerned with our own financial futures. We must seem to care very little about the accidents and natural disasters that claimed the lives of so many in countries far away just a few hours ago. And we must really want to blame someone for all this. At least, we must seem so if this is how the day’s media real estate got apportioned.

Back in January, I posted a link to a sermon I love, “Guidelines for a Constructive Church” presented by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Ebenezer Baptist Church back in 1966. He based his sermon on a messianic text in the book of Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,[a]
to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.

King said that a constructive church binds up the brokenhearted. It gives hope to a disappointed and fearful people.

… Sunday after Sunday, week after week, people come to God’s church with broken hearts. They need a word of hope. And the church has an answer—if it doesn’t, it isn’t a church…[God] doesn’t say that you’re going to escape tension; he doesn’t say that you’re going to escape disappointment; he doesn’t say that you’re going to escape trials and tribulations. But what religion does say is this: that if you have faith in God, that God has the power to give you a kind of inner equilibrium through your pain. So let not your heart be troubled. “If ye believe in God, ye believe also in me.” Another voice rings out, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden.” As if to say, “Come unto me, all ye that are burdened down. Come unto me, all ye that are frustrated. Come unto me, all ye with clouds of anxiety floating in your mental skies. Come unto me, all ye that are broke down. Come unto me, all ye that are heartbroken. Come unto me, all ye that are laden with heavy ladens, and I will give you rest.” And the rest that God gives is the rest that passeth all understanding. The world doesn’t understand that kind of rest, because it’s a rest that makes it possible for you to stand up amid outer storms, and yet you maintain inner calm. If the church is true to its guidelines, it heals the broken-hearted.

Whether the grey sky we’ve been painted in the news is as newsworthy as an editor somewhere deems it to be matters less than what is truly newsworthy. As God’s people, we are bearers of news that eclipses the bleak financial storm with a lasting hope. In Christ, those who despair are transformed into people who praise. In Christ, tragic accidents and natural disaster are transformed from ashes into beauty. In Christ, mourning is turned to joy. In Christ, the brokenhearted are tended and comforted. Our great and merciful Editor has already determined that it is Jesus who is truly newsworthy, whose message and work is what can pierce the darkness of our times and our hearts. My prayer is to remember what is truly newsworthy and to reflect his beauty, tender heart, comfort and praise amidst the dark’s ashes.