Have you turned on a news channel recently?

Oh my heart!

I have sat with tears many times recently at the loss of precious life. I don’t know those moms and dads that have lost a son, or father - but I feel pain for them and wish I could just hold them.

Last night, Newt Gingrich summarized the noted terror attacks in the past 37 days and it was jarring. Between senseless shootings, bombings, racism, famine, bullying, economies collapsing, diseases, political games, political lies, we see the worst humanity has to offer often in front of our eyes.

CCN tells a lot of stories of gloom – of desperation.

This world has some profound challenges. A recent survey in the U.S. showed that counselling appointments for anxiety has skyrocketed. The intake services report that people are anxious about world events and personal safety.

The gloom can pile up and become a heavy reality.  The world is looking for an answer. After the tragic events over the past couple weeks, I have seen so many people speak openly about their need for God, quoting scripture and praying.

It seems two things are happening at once: 1) people’s faith is being tested and 2) the need for faith is being ignited.

Faith doesn’t become faith until it meets trial and you have to t trust through pain or darkness. C.S. Lewis paint this picture of faith, “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?”

It is not just desperation around the world, but I hear many stories of desperation with people in my world.  The hope is being squashed, goodness is being polluted, and goodwill is being emptied.

Desperation is: loss of hope - surrender to defeat - resulting in rash behavior or withdrawl

Jodi Picoult says, “The desperate usually succeed because they have nothing to lose.”

Having nothing to lose is a deception that desperation brings. There is always something and someone to life for, become healthy for, to fight for.

Desperation sometimes brings you back to a point where you know you need something you can’t find within yourself. It helps us recognize the finite fragility of life. C.S. Lewis says, “When you have realized that our position is nearly desperate you will begin to understand what the Christians are talking about.” We need God in our lives; we are so insufficient without Him.

At the root of desperation is a lack of hope. A heart without hope grows sick (Prov 13:12). Hope is part of the answer to all this mess, specifically hope and faith in God. But there is more required: a tangible expression of that hope and faith.

It is not simply global issues that need an infusion of hope, but our personal lives. We can go to dark places and we can get stuck in ourselves.

We need to be altruistic in times of atrocities. To provide to each other a hospitality that breaths hope.

We must choose GOODWILL over GLOOM.

Goodwill: being actively friendly, expressing kindness, taking action for the benefit of someone else.

OVER

Gloom: being stuck in darkness, becoming paralyzed or detached

This is a time where men and women need to be actively working for the good of others.
Jesus most profound and perhaps challenging command was to “love your neighbor as yourself.” I say it is challenging because I think people find it hard to fully and freely love others. The reason? They have not first fully applied the unconditional love of God to their own lives. First apply the unconditional love of God to your life (truly that is something to meditate on and continue to grow in understanding and experience), and then freely give that unconditional love to the person in front of you, next to you, above you and below you.

Martin Luther penned these powerful words, “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.”

Goodwill is the glue that sticks family and community together. It’s a healer and unifier.

I think that history, Scripture and our own experiences demonstrate that selfless acts in service towards another person, is an act that brings life to both people. We need to get excited about someone's needs getting met, and someone's heart getting filled up. That selfless act also fills up your heart too!

Practicing goodwill will increase your well-being as well as the person you are showing kindness to.

If each one of us acted on this Biblical principle – we would change the atmosphere in communities and life levels of depression and anxiety in our own lives. Did you know that after 9/11 the New York city crime rate plummeted to an all-time low. Why? Because they chose good will over gloom. Goodwill became the glue that bonded them together. The people were so focused on helping each other, their sense of community grew strong.  That sense of purpose and belonging led to greater security and safety.

Even as I close this post, I saw two women of two different ethnicities, in deep political disagreement, hug one another and say I love you. So beautiful!

Let us not be suffocated by desperation and surrender to defeat. We can take action in our family, workplace, and community choosing goodwill over gloom.

Be creative, be kind, be free!


For our hearts:

1.    Break out of desensitization and come back to the point where you believe that life is PRECIOUS and a gift.
2.    See the unique and innate value in others and seek to appreciate differences.
3.    If HOPE is being squandered by focusing on stress/problems, refocus to the source of HOPE so that your heart may be well, and you will not act rashly with your life.
4.    Examine your levels of empathy – are they being depleted by the gloom in the world or your own world? (Empathy: the ability to share someone else's feelings/experiences with a kindness and goodwill towards them).
5.    Have you defined, “who is my neighbor?”
6.    Have you accepted God’s unconditional love? You cannot give what you have not received.
7.    Is your desire to express goodwill intact? Have you done something for someone who cannot repay you recently?
8.    Have a plan of how you will model and teach goodwill over gloom to your children.