I’ve heard my mom tell this about me, and I recall just enough about it to know it’s true. As a child I had this thing about bad weather. Not so much literal rain or a thunderstorm actually happening around us, but bad weather being broadcasted on the local news channel. For me, I can take you back to now-retired Meteorologist Mike Reader at WLOX in South Mississippi. There was something about the weather maps with all the various notices of potential thunderstorms, flooding, heatwaves, wind gusts, or even hail, ice, and freezing rain that caused me to not want to be in the room when the weather forecast was live on air. As humorous as this sounds, I would even leave the room and peek around the corner until Mike Reader was finished, if it was a nasty weather forecast, at least. I know, I know, it’s silly. Now to be fair to my young self, we did live in a very hurricane-prone area, and we had all seen our share of them. But to me, at that age and where I was in life, it was additional negative information that my young brain and emotions simply didn’t want to absorb. Fast forward to today, when we’re not only surrounded by weather information on our smartphones and watches but inundated and pummeled with a remarkably immense amount of negative and conflicting information, not to mention social media. It’s truly overwhelming the amount of negativity we have yelling at us from all sides.
But some might say, “Oh, but I can take it. All that information is good to know, and I can parse through it with no problem.” However, here’s the issue: we weren’t created to absorb the amount of negativity thrown at us every single day. Science, over and over again, has proven this fact. One report states:
Recent studies suggest people around the world demonstrate measurably stronger physiological responses to negative news than to positive news. The body is reacting before the mind has decided whether the threat is relevant. Some researchers have introduced a clinical framework for what happens in this instance called Problematic News Consumption (PNC) — a pattern of news engagement that results in preoccupation, dysregulation and disruption to daily functioning. In their 2022 study, the researchers found that 17 percent of American adults qualified as having severe levels of PNC. Among that group, 61 percent reported feeling unwell quite a bit or very much, compared with six percent of those who didn’t.
Friends, we simply weren’t created to process the amount of information we have at our fingertips, let alone the amount of negative information we have at our fingertips. So how can we find some solace in scripture on how to see our future through God’s filter, knowing there is bad in the world?
The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.
What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
— Romans 8:26-391
I get it. It’s easy to get all wrapped up in focusing on the hardships and other challenging items of our world, especially if they are personally affecting us. Yet, my friends, we weren’t personally meant to take on the world, so you can’t allow the world to rest on your shoulders. We have been challenged in scripture to be the best we can be in the space in which we have been placed, knowing that none of these hardships will keep us from God and His plan for our lives.
I believe that if we will simply walk in who God has created us to be, and be His hands and feet to the territory in which He has us, we can make an impact on our world without allowing the complete negativity and challenging situations and voices of this world to pull us down into a place of depression or anxiety. And believe me, I am totally preaching to myself. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord…nothing!
This week, if you are feeling overwhelmed by the great challenges of this world, slow down, take a deep breath, turn off the channels that are feeding your mind, and remind yourself that Christ has overcome the world and that there is a better day coming, a much better day. Christ will return and will make all things new. He is much more than the forecast around you. Hallelujah!
O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
— Book of Common Prayer2
Luke Gambill 