One Small Act

In recent years, I’ve had a hard time reading or listening to the news. I used to listen to it often on my drive to church and sometimes on my drive home. What I noticed is that I would inevitably arrive with a heightened sense of anxiety. 

Do you ever feel that after you turn off the news? 

I have become more and more aware that our media sources – whether they are left, right, or claim to be center – have a huge financial incentive to raise our anxiety… to make us angry or upset. And they have a huge financial incentive to feed us exactly what we want to hear based on our political leanings. They know that anxiety, that fear, even that confirmation keeps us coming back. Clicks. Readers. Listeners… Money.

And so I shut it off. And I stopped reading the paper. I said: I’m done! And, sure enough, my anxiety came way down.

The only thing is… very recently, a friend challenged me on this. He said: As Christians, we are not called to totally withdraw from this world. We’re called to be a light, a beacon of hope in the midst of it. He continued: We can monitor what we are taking in. (I mean, do we really need to listen to or read op-ed and opinion pieces?) And we can monitor how much we are taking in. (I was taking in way too much before). 

My friend’s suggestion was once a week (things don’t change much week to week), once a week, to pray through the headlines – remembering to lift up the most vulnerable and the most powerful. And then to ask God if there is some small action I can take that would help heal, mend or bring peace. God, grant me the courage, the energy, whatever I need to do that one small thing. And then to pray for God’s will to be done in all things.

Just a suggestion, he said. But not a bad suggestion. 

Let us pray: God of hope, so much of what is going on in the world around us feels out of our control, and mostly it is. But show us the small steps we can take. And then, Lord, help us to let go. We give you our eyes, our ears, our hands, our feet. Heal us and center us, that we might be instruments of your peace. In Christ’s name, we pray. Amen.