Twenty-four hour news sounds good, but there seems to be no escape.
The bad always outweighs the good, because every journalist knows that bad news sells.
It becomes the background noise of our life and fear seeps into our subconscious.
Think of the past few months. We can tune out faraway places, but what of the terror that comes closer to home?
Movie-goers get mowed down in a Colorado theatre. School children in Newtown. Every school and college is on high alert, because some lone shooter may be ready to open fire.
Then comes another Boston Marathon and what promised to be life returning to normal, even if just for a day. Then comes more horror. Bombs, killings and a major American City locked down in fear until the remaining shooter is found.
Next a solid, unexciting fertilizer plant suddenly explodes in a quiet town in Texas. The blast kills at least 14 people and injures 200 or more, devastating a large section of West, population 2,500.
That's Life in Twenty-first Century America
Parents fear for their children. Schools are on high alert.
Experts say to proect kids from viewing the violence. Parents ask how to do that when there's nothing else on television and every break carries a "teaser" for the news.
How do we reassure our children when we're quaking inside? Where do we dredge up confidence when we have none left to give?
The real question is, How do we live with this?
I have no answers on my own, but I know where to look.
In the Bible, of course. Hope and comfort thread through it from beginning to end. Take Psalm 121 for example, here from the New American Standard Bible:
I will lift up my eyes to the mountains;
From where shall my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.He will not allow your foot to slip;
He who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, He who keeps Israel
Will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your keeper;
The Lord is your shade on your right hand.The sun will not smite you by day,
Nor the moon by night.
The Lord will protect you from all evil;
He will keep your soul.
The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from this day forward.
Suppose every night at bedtime we quietly repeated these beautiful words to our children. Before long they'll be speaking them with us. Instead of saying, "Have a good day," we could let this blessing echo in the minds of our families.
The point is if we regularly take in fear, we live out fear. Some of us have internalized this constant low-level anxiety for so long we think it's normal.
It's even worse for children, because they don't understand it and feel even more powerless than adults.
That's not the way we're meant to live.
In case you wonder, yes, I struggle with this, too. I can build a whole scenario on "What if . . . ?"
(I'm a writer, remember?)
Events of the past week remind us again that life holds risks and earthly protection sometimes fails. Our security rests in the One who watches over us and neither slumbers nor sleeps.
So we can live--and sleep--in peace.
Growing along with you and trusting the One who keeps us,
Lenore
