Resetting and Unplugging Worked
Our two-day break from the news is over. (Losing Contact with the Outside World)
Our son-in-law came over and fixed the problem in a few minutes. It seems we skipped one small step – unplugging the set top cable box, keeping it off several seconds, and then restoring power.
Who knew?
Tuning out the contentious political dialogue has been good – a reminder that life is so much more than people’s opinion of current events, including my own.
The end of the nineteen-sixties was a similar time; I could not tune out the news of war, racial unrest, and political corruption. They influenced my speech so that I couldn’t complete a sentence without coarse language debasing my thoughts and words. Or, so it seemed to me. I realized I could not have a civil conversation to save my soul!
So, I took a sabbatical from Inside the Beltway and got a little taste of the reality in Ecuador. But, by resetting and unplugging, I came to understand
My insignificance in the scheme of things, and
My inability to work my will over my circumstances.
No, back then, I did not believe an infinite and personal God would have helped me sort through the upheavals of my life and times.
I do now, even if I am ever so prone to doubt God, and fear the times in which we live. (No, I am not proud of still being a news junkie.)
The mystery is that now I know I am significant in His economy, and I am able to do more than I ever imagined. So is every other human being.
Too often, I forget this, and my speech reflects this. Maybe this is the reason so many public folks lapse into such caustic remarks? (Psalm 141:3)
I recommend unplugging from the news and resetting our perspective; a few days without political commentary from the left right and in-between has been a restorative. No, I still can’t control much – but what I can control, today, I will.
How often I get in God’s way when He’s trying to help. How God can’t do for me what I insist on doing for myself . . .
[W]hen we surrender our determination to stay in control and do what we want in exchange for God’s will for us, we open ourselves to His power, because His power always flows in the direction of His will. (Heather Kopp, Sober Boots, pp. 119-120)