The news is booze! It will make your head wooze.
Last week — being over-exposed to the Presidential election news — I found myself anxiously consulting the headlines several times a day. Not good. I began to suffer a kind of polical poison-brain.
When my brother Steve told me he had read an article that said overexposure to negative, unsettling or violent reports on the news has an ill effect on health, I unhooked.
I was suffering from toxic political waste. It can cause stress, anxiety and depression.
I’m better now.
Over the weekend I baked an excellent pizza, I went to the park with my family, I settled down to reading a fine biography of Ben Franklin, I took in a fun and inspiring Christian music concert, and I had an excellent time at church yesterday surrounded by people who don’t thrive on insults. Last night I watched 60 Minutes where I saw that a church — guided by love not fear — was sponsoring Syrian refugees. How refreshing!
This week I’m living differently. I am glancing at the political circus, but I’m not buying a ticket to the big tent. With the lack of integrity that characterizes some of our candidates, with the level of hostility, vitriol and brutality that defines this election, I think it is best for me to wean myself from political voyeurism.
Frankly, the whole mess makes me vow to eschew lying, to long to live and act more humbly, to honor everyone I can around me, to be kind to suffering people from other countries, to never be inappropriate with women, to give away more time and money to charity than I ever have before and finally to further open myself to the astonishingly compassionate and unselfish heart of God for all people.
It’s what we are supposed to do.
He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8
Thrive! 