Bad News

Praise the LORD! Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who greatly delights in his commandments! His offspring will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed. Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever. Light dawns in the darkness for the upright; he is gracious, merciful, and righteous. It is well with the man who deals generously and lends; who conducts his affairs with justice. For the righteous will never be moved; he will be remembered forever. He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the LORD. His heart is steady; he will not be afraid, until he looks in triumph on his adversaries. He has distributed freely; he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever; his horn is exalted in honor. The wicked man sees it and is angry; he gnashes his teeth and melts away; the desire of the wicked will perish! (Psalm 112 ESV). July has been a disturbing month. While some of the terrorist attacks have been more widely publicized than others, it may be a surprise to you that there have been 151 attacks in the month of July resulting in the death of at least one person. Executions, bombings, shootings, rocket attacks, and vehicular attacks have all been in the headlines. It makes me wonder what bad news will be making the headlines in August. If you are much like I am, you are ready for some good news. I suppose we could look for a place in the world that is isolated from all of the bad news of our world. However, I haven’t found such a place yet. So, it begs the question, where can we turn to escape bad news? The truth is that we should not seek to escape the bad news as we should learn to face it fearlessly. No matter where we live on this tired old planet, bad news will always be there. Freedom from fear is one of the blessings of trusting God. Our reading today makes that abundantly clear. That trust does not make all the awful things go away. It teaches us that we must trust in God’s sovereign rule because we know that he bends evil to accomplish his good purposes. So we are not ripped by a maelstrom of seemingly random bad circumstances. Our reading uses some words that bring great hope to me. They are long range words like “generation” and “forever.” They call to us to view life from a broader perspective. Now might be a bad news kind of world, but there is a time promised where all of those things that cause us to wince with the blow of more destruction and death will certainly and forever be done away with. In the midst of this kind of world we can focus on the big picture. When our focus is on that world, we see God’s news which is always good news. This is how John sees it: And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4 ESV).