The World is Going to Hell

Maybe it's because of the date today. I dunno, but I really feel like I need to get this off my chest. It may or may not sound coherent or really be what I'm trying to say.

Our life experiences touch other people's life experiences. Start with you and think about all the people you could possibly interact with during a single week. That's a lot of people. Every person's life touches so many others' lives as well. And their lives touch ours.

In any given day, there is so much news, good and bad, that is reported. Mostly bad because in the media, the general opinion is that "if it bleeds it leads".

Consider this:

• Sunday morning I found out from the sound guy at church that he didn't get home from a trip in Kentucky until really late because there was a bad accident on I-71.
• Yesterday during lunch I found out from a coworker that it was his stepdad who was killed in that same accident.
• Another coworker was out yesterday for a funeral and has another viewing to attend later this week. She mentioned a few minutes ago that her sister-in-law was raped on the way home from work, and that it was mentioned on the news.

These events have not happened to me personally, yet they can affect me because they've touched people whose lives I also touch. I don't want this bad news to negatively affect my mood, yet I want to show compassion and empathy. I have to be careful.

I've realized that it's not healthy for us humans to dump all of our negative feelings and emotions on other people so much. We can't handle it, and we might find ourselves being brought down in the process, too.

I think we should really be going to God more often in these cases. You see it when you read the Psalms. I believe that God is so much more able to handle the negative emotions and situations better than any human being can.

Death is inevitable for all of us. We will experience pain and hardship. We will hurt each other and ourselves. We will have disappointments and we will grieve over all of our losses. We will have lots and lots of suffering and tragedy.

That is why we cannot hope for what this world has to offer us. We must put our hope in God and in his Son Jesus Christ. The hope we have as Christians, as true followers of Jesus, is that in heaven all of the nasty things about this life will not be there. It will all be replaced by something that is greater than we can even imagine.

Discuss.