When the News is Heavy – 3 Ways to Recover Peace
- Maggie Wallem Rowe
- Sep 15
- 3 min read
Where do you find the strength to rise up as the weight of the world presses in?
AUDIO LETTER
First, we have LOTS of new friends joining us for the first time this week. Welcome to our community of seasoned souls! You are just in time for our new series this fall on seizing joy. I’m also sharing my travel & ministry schedule at the end of today’s letter.
What will you find here (or on Substack, where most comments are posted and our discussions take place)?
- Supportive friends discussing healthy relationships with God, others, and ourselves.
- A letter of encouragement—audio and print—sent directly to you each Tuesday.
- My special monthly giveaway of new books for subscribers only every “first Friday”
[AND you are all in time to participate in the biggest giveaway ever—“Fall in Love with Books!” Please watch your inbox this Thursday for multiple chances to win over $1000 in prizes from me and other author-friends.]
Have you awoken this past week with a light heart, or a heavy one?
An optimistic spirit or an apprehensive one?
An emotional tank full of expectancy, or one running low on hope?
It was a rough week for us all. A defenseless woman who fled from the war in her native Ukraine was stabbed to death on a subway here in North Carolina.
The assassination in Utah of a well-known college campus free speech and public debate advocate was witnessed by thousands.
A radicalized teenager opened fire on his fellow students in Denver.
As a nation, we observed the 24th anniversary of a terrorist attack that claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 men, women, and children.
You and I were powerless to prevent any of this, yet we know evil will never, ever have the last word. Not even the first.
Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. It never will.
Seizing joy is not a passive choice but an impassioned pursuit. We live in an imperfect world where beautiful and terrible things happen.
How do we acknowledge, lament, and actively work against evil when it is irrational, unpredictable, and inexplicable?
There are no easy steps, no proven principles for recovering hope. But here are three things I’ve been pondering:
1. God is omniscient; we are not. When we are inflamed by yet one more tragedy or injustice, we can refrain from adding our uninformed voices to the polarized rhetoric online.
Most of us are not privileged with insider information on why certain victims were targeted, or what motivated the perpetrator. As one pastor who was urging restraint this past week commented, “To assume X about ____ is to make an ASS out of U and ME.” In humility, let’s wait to speak until we can improve on silence.
2. Before declaring vengeance on our perceived opponents—vowing retribution, punishment, or public shaming, we must return to what our Rabbi taught us: to love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, and pray for those who persecute us.
Before claiming victim status for our own tribe we can look to our brothers and sisters who live in difficult and dangerous places to follow Christ around the globe. They have much to teach us about what it means to be persecuted.
3. We must hold fast to our local family of believers. What lifted weight from my heart this past week was bringing the burden of collective tragedies to Sabbath worship, gathering with other Christ-followers. We prayed as our Lord taught us to pray. We recited the creeds of our faith. We grieved, yet not as those who have no hope.
“We go to church because we are a forgetful people. We need to be corporately called into the presence of God and unmasked in our hypocrisies and blindnesses. We need to be repaired and restored at the table of Jesus, which is laid by his own body and blood. We need to be sent back out into the world God so loves, not by our own power or political muscle but by the Spirit of Jesus." Jen Pollock Michel
Do we all have to claim the same denominational affiliation, personal beliefs or political positions? We do not. As one of my favorite Bible teachers once wrote, we don’t have to have matching plates to sit at the same table as long as Christ is seated at the head.
Beloved friends, whatever the news these coming days, let’s hold onto hope even as we hold onto Christ, our head.
Joy comes in many colors. Let’s seize it together.
So much love,
Maggie
