Around the beginning of this year I attended a meeting of senior citizens.
A motivational speaker urged us not to watch the news if we were to remain positive and keep our cool. Many of us nodded glumly knowing that old age brings its own problems without us taking on the troubles of the world. On television we see crime scenes, graphic pictures of horrible suffering, starving children jostling to get to the front of a food queue, bombed out cities and cries of distress coming from under the rubble.
Yet deep down I disagreed with the speaker. We can’t become ostriches and pretend all this isn’t happening.
In spite of all of those bad news items there are some really good things happening that never get reported. People running soup kitchens, some good honest policemen trying to protect the public, paramedics doing their best to save lives, doctors and nurses working overtime in crowded hospitals and preachers of the true gospel (good news) persisting in spite of negative comments from the public.
So where can everyone, people of all ages, look to find some good news? The four gospel writers tell us all about it and one translation of the Bible is called the Good News Bible. Personally I find it beneficial to study something from the Old Testament and the new, every day. While we are warned that evil will increase in leaps and bounds, ( 2 Timothy 3:13, 1 Timothy:1,2) the essential good news is that Jesus is coming to set up His Kingdom, bringing the good news to everyone on this planet.
The prophet Isaiah tells us that “nothing will hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain,” (11:9)
This Kingdom will last forever and grant us “the joy of your presence and the pleasure of living with You forever Psalm 16: 11).