The Most Shocking News

I don’t know what to do with the daily news, the media. I don’t know what to do with the articles on facebook or the headlines. For some reason the last month has felt very news heavy with conflicts in Israel, Isis in Iraq, the Ebola outbreak, and police brutality around the US. And honestly I have a very difficult time believing what I hear. I don’t want to minimize the conflict or pretend these things aren’t happening, but I question the source. I wonder about the shock value. I wonder how I am supposed to see images, read articles, hear horror stories and still go about my day. 

Today as I was driving Rock to school my mind was rabbit trailing and a thought popped into my head. I thought, “The most shocking news is that God is faithful.” As I thought about the horror and trauma that humanity is experiencing day in and day out, I also remembered, my emotions being jolted, that in the midst of the chaos there are God stories. There are stories of hope in the darkest of places. There are miracles and angels and Jesus coming to life in his people in all of these news worthy situations. God is not far away from us. He is in the middle of us. 

Again, I don’t want to minimize what is going on. I know driving my son to school and sleeping in a bed every night can make it easy for me to turn a blind eye to the awful things other people are facing straight in the eye. But I also want to believe that with every jaw dropping CNN update that there are millions of stories of God. I believe that God is working wonders in the middle of disease and murder and exploitation. I believe that love is shocking because it can resurrect any place that looks and smells like death. 

I pray for these God stories to surface and I pray that my faith isn’t built on my comfy life. I know if I were to lose my spouse or a child or my entire family I would have the actual experience that so many others are having, but my hope is that we, with Jesus in our hearts, would explode with His kindness in the face of the worst. I don’t know how to face the darkness of humanity, but Jesus does. He hasn’t left and he won’t leave and I pray this truth over all the hurting today.