Good morning…
At the beginning of this stormy week, I watched the sun rise. On my way back from the beach, I happened upon a slender, cream colored cat. Completely ignoring the warm sun at her back, this elegant little creature was caught gobbling down garbage.
The image reminds me of an email I recently received from a friend: “I can’t and haven’t watched the news in years. It has a toxic effect on me and makes me feel helpless.”
I understand what she is saying. Numbing news is broadcast non-stop. Being glued to a news feed is like turning our back to the rising sun, sticking our head in a black plastic bag and living off the leftovers of life. Toxic. Helpless. “I just can’t.”
Karl Barth, a well known theologian, is famous for saying something like this: “One must hold a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.” It turns out, he didn’t really say the phrase quite the way he is quoted. “[Barth] recalls that 40 years ago he advised young theologians ‘to take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.’”
What I hear from Barth is a healthy balance. Is it possible to satiate ourselves with Scripture and be wise, prayerful interpreters of the daily news?
I think Karl Barth is on to something here. There it was—the true Light [the genuine, perfect, steadfast Light] which, coming into the world, enlightens everyone (John 1:9, AMP). Daily digesting the Word of God, we are enlightened by the true, the genuine, the steadfast. Keeping our Bible close at hand, we interpret newsworthy world events in the warm Light of our loving Lord.
Morning after morning, we are invited to freely feed from the living, breathing Word. I have come as Light into the world, so that everyone who believes and trusts in Me [as Savior—all those who anchor their hope in Me and rely on the truth of My message] will not continue to live in darkness (John 14:46, AMP). Believing and trusting, hoping and relying, we lose our appetite for gobbling down garbage.
…Sue…
