God’s ongoing love for the world

The news for the past two weeks has seemed almost worse than normal and it’s never been great. Shootings, more shootings, the SBC report, an elementary school shooting. It’s sobering and heavy. Many of my prayers are grief and anger and lament. 

I’m constantly searching for the balance of paying attention to the world and not diving in so deeply that I’m pulled under. Where can I participate in redemption and where am I crossing the line into performative showings of care and despair? How do I tend to what’s been entrusted to me in the midst of so much grief? 

In this terror, I search for joy, for wonder, for delight. I took this picture when I left to meet a friend for an early breakfast before my family was even awake this morning. The sunrise, at this particular home that I love, is a balm to my heart. 

Delight has been my sustenance in drought. I couldn’t continue in any meaningful way without it. It is the rain that allows me to cultivate my life into something beautiful and useful instead of becoming a desert. I’ve used the hashtag #chasingtinydelights on Instagram for a few years because it has been so transformative for me. 

I’m not waiting for something big. I’m carrying the sunrise with me, a conversation with a friend, the feel of a book in my hand, a morning kiss from my husband, the taste of homemade challah, a hike in the forest, or an evening in the garden. 

Just like I do on Instagram, I release myself from constantly talking about headlines in this space. Not because they don’t matter, but because there’s not always a new thing to say. And if there is, that doesn’t mean I am the one to say it. Sometimes I will comment; sometimes I won’t. It has nothing to do with how much I care. What I’m considering again is something I learned about Bonhoeffer last summer. Specifically this quote about how he lived in Nazi Germany. “To put it bluntly, the world appeared to be going to hell. Yet despite this devastation, Bonhoeffer wrote with passion and clarity of God’s love for this world.” I wrote an entire post about it. 

I want to love the world well, just as God does, right here in these awful times. Last week, I talked to a friend about how God sees all the brokenness in the world and He still loves it. He loves us and He knows us. It’s beyond anything I could do, but I want to reflect that. Delight plants my feet in the ground of that love.