Embracing the Bad
Monday (December 15)
Embracing the Bad
Psalm 112:7
He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the LORD.
Nowadays, I’m trying to take a bit of a break from the bombardment of news for one simple reason: it almost always seems like bad news. I signed in just yesterday to a media app just to get caught up quickly on what I’d missed, and the very top headline was news that another gunman had driven his car into a church and killed vulnerable worshippers. The day before that, I listened to a missionary and journalist explain the devastating persecution taking place in Nigeria, where Muslim radicals are burning down churches and killing tens of thousands of Christians. One picture that flashed across the screen was of a group of Christians seated resolutely on their chairs, with the pastor in the middle, amidst a pile of wreckage from where their church once stood, proclaiming with their stance that such terrorism would not keep them from gathering to worship Christ. Well, the only good thing that came of me seeing that was that it immediately turned my heart away from the trivial problems of my own day to pray for brothers and sisters like these who are facing an onslaught of enemy fire. But the question still remains: how do we not become despondent and fearful with all the bad news that meets us from day to day? If it isn’t politics, it’s a virus. If it isn’t a virus, it’s a storm. If it isn’t a storm, it’s another church shooting or another war breaking out or another prominent pastor being exposed for a double life.
When the Psalmist writes here that a faith-filled man is not afraid of bad news, he isn’t saying that we as Christians never feel afraid or never feel pain, but rather that we rest our lives on God’s ever-abiding favor. We make the gospel of Jesus Christ the header and footer of our lives of faith and then filter all that comes between through the lens of that good news. Let’s make this proclamation from Psalm 46:1- 3 our resolution today: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth give way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling.”