A gentle reminder: The world is full of problems, injustices, and heartaches… and you’re not made to handle them.
None of us are.
C.S. Lewis saw what “the news” was doing to people decades ago:
It is one of the evils of rapid diffusion of news that the sorrows of all the world come to us every morning. I think each village was meant to feel pity for its own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help… A great many people do now seem to think that the mere state of being worried is, in itself, meritorious.
We can’t bear the sorrows of the entire world. It’s too much. Instead, writes Paul to the Thessalonians,
“Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” (I Thessalonians 4:11-12)
Living a quiet life is very do-able. Minding our own business is very do-able. Attending to the needs, the people, who are right in front of us? Also do-able. And much more peaceful, too.
Way more peaceful.
It all reminds me of a line from the comedian Duncan Trussell: “Some poor, phoneless fool is probably sitting next to a waterfall somewhere totally unaware of how angry and scared he is supposed to be.”
Brant Hansen
Midday Show Host, STAR 99.1
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