Time to Change your Focus!

Because I'm getting older?

Because of the pandemic?

Because the news always focuses on the bad and not the good?

For whatever reason, I often notice more bad things happening, as you probably do too. From the health crises beginning last year, to humanitarian and armed conflicts in far away places, it seems the world is in great pain and getting worse. There is torture and death, malnutrition, oppression and prejudice, stripping the land, wild weather events. And there are the political conflicts and polarization in our country on top of it all.

At any moment terrible things are happening: So, this is the sad state of the world, but…

At any moment on the earth, good is happening. Each minute 250 babies are born across the world. There is hope and joy, with expectations and possibilities. New trees sprout each hour, plants for food grow, items that people need are delivered to stores around the world.

Millions gather for worship weekly, millions smile at those they love, millions share something with their neighbor that they didn’t have to, like the meal for the family next door where the husband has a new cancer diagnosis. Sure there is bad, but there is a lot of good too.

Instead of focusing on the bad, think with me for a moment about water, a staple of life: A drop of rain that falls on my yard will run to the creek behind my house, down to the larger tributary of the creek, to the stream, to the Ohio River, to the Mississippi, to the Gulf of Mexico, and mingle with the waters of the Atlantic, then be drawn up by the sun into clouds to drop again in rain on another part of the planet.

Life is happening. Good life is here.