I think we can all agree that we're living in a day when it's probably best to limit our daily intake of news as far as it's possible. For our mental and physical health, it's good to stay informed but not be hooked to an IV of it where it's fed to us continuously, drip after drip. As kind of a news junkie, it's been an adjustment I've learned I needed to make as things have ramped up around the country. Watching what appears to be the world turning upside down is enough to make a person lose their joy and peace and hope- all those things we're supposed to have in abundance.

As y'all know, I used Ancestry.com to trace back my family history during the quarantine. I trust you didn't forget the part about me descending from Scottish royalty. Well, something else that I was reminded of in the pages of our history- every generation has had its struggles and hardships. Some have been unique to a certain time period and some are like history repeating itself but there has always been struggle.

While Carson napped in his baby bed, I remember I was working in the kitchen when the news interrupted the tv show I had on as background noise. I remember going into the family room and turning up the volume because it was obvious that something terrible had happened. I sat in a chair, still holding a damp dish towel, and watched the horror. The second plane hit and so did the reality that this was no accident. I remember being so scared because it was all happening so fast and no one knew what would unfold next. I sat in that chair thinking most about my baby in his bed and my young child at her school and I wondered what was happening to their world.
I was born in 1968. I've heard it referred to as the year that shattered America. To say that there was a lot going on would be an understatement. I was born about a month after Martin Luther King, Jr was killed. There were the civil rights struggles, the Vietnam War and its war demonstrators, and another Kennedy was assasinated- just to name a few more. Locally, a Jewish synagogue was bombed. After I was born and was tucked away in the hospital nursery, a smoke bomb was thrown into that area. It was an attempt to busy all the firetrucks and law enforcement while another act of hatred was being carried out on another side of town. As my Mama watched the bassinets rolling down the smoky hallway with nurses telling her to get back in her room, I'm sure she was wondering what was happening to my world.
When my mother was less than three months old, my grandmother kissed my granddaddy and he left for Camp Shelby and then onto Fort McClellan to train for his role in World War 2. All alone with an infant, my grandmother had no idea where he'd be going or when he'd be back or even if he would. For 4 years, he was a world away from south Mississippi in France, Germany, and Austria. As part of the war effort, my grandmother worked in a factory that made parachutes for the troops, while her mother kept her baby. Knowing about all the terror of the Nazi regime and not sure how the effort to stop them would turn out, I'm certain, when she held my mother in her arms, she was wondering what was happening to her world.
My great-grandmother who was born in the late 1800's was widowed at a fairly young age in the middle of the Great Depression. Most of her 9 children were still young enough to be living at home and their provision and care fell solely on her shoulders with her husband gone. Her older boys planted crops. The vegetables were canned. Some fruits were canned and some sun-dried. She had chickens for eggs and meat and cows for milking. They raised hogs and cured the meat. Before sunrise to after dark, while she worked to keep everyone fed and clothed, there's no doubt she was wondering what was happening to their world.
That same great-grandmother, who cared for her children through the depression, lost her father in 1918 to the Spanish flu epidemic that killed 500,000 Americans, which brings us back around to something that sounds really familiar. These stories were just from one line of my family- my mother's mother. I'm sure I could take each family line and continue to go back, generation after generation as far as the existence of human life would take me, and find significant issues and struggles that faced each one. War, disease, economic disaster, social unrest, pioneer hardships, and on and on. We can be tempted to believe that this time we're in is as bad as it's ever been, but I'm sure other generations from the past would strongly disagree.

One disadvantage that we clearly do have over them all, though, is that we're constantly blasted with every morsel of bad news as it happens. Instantly and continuously. Aside from all the news outlets and social media dissemination, almost every citizen in every corner of the earth is armed with a camera, a recording device, and many public platforms to share their findings, so we see disturbing footage and hear shocking stories all day long. Unlike generations before us, we don't have to wait for a newspaper to land in our yard or the news to broadcast the highlights on the radio or even for Walter Cronkite to break in with a newsflash. No, our minds are constantly fed bad news because it sells better than the good kind.

As Christians, we can allow that constant drip to make us anxious, bitter, and angry or we can realize that we're just living out the struggles of our day. Like every other generation before us has done. Yes, there is evil. Yes, there is godlessness. Yes, there are problems. Yes, there are people who wish to do us harm. But, those things have always been and always will be as long as God keeps us here on this earth.

We can let the echo of bad news drown out everything good until it dominates our minds and hearts or we can control the volume and monitor its flow and let God's Good News have the microphone. Nothing about our particular time has caught Him off guard. And as long as He has us here, He has a purpose for each one of us. Our time will certainly be better spent looking for that purpose rather than watching the news.

Hope we can all find some lovely and honorable things to think about, this week. It's out there- let's find it!

"I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth, you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world." John 16:33

"You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you."
Isaiah 26:3