It’s a reality of our times that news from around the world is nearly inescapable. While there are good news stories out there, what we usually hear is the bad...from fires and floods, to civil wars, terrorist attacks, teacher strikes, and gov’t shut downs. Of course, the real catastrophes are the ones that touch us personally, the challenges and difficulties that affect our circle of friends and family. A shutdown doesn’t really affect me, unless I work for the TSA or other gov’t agency. A teacher strike hits home when my future is being negotiated or I am a student waiting for normalcy to return. How should we respond to the abundance of bad news that we hear each day? It reminds me o

I like to start the New Year by going back to the beginning of my Bible, so on January 1stI turned to Genesis 1 and started reading the beautiful story of Creation. My eyes paused on a familiar verse that seemed new and fresh that day. It was Genesis 1: 14, “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years.’” I was thinking about the passage of time that day, and the Spirit began to speak to me through this verse. By God’s providence, the sun and moon make the earth habitable…but they also help us measure the flow of time. They “mark seasons and days and years.” Amazingly, our