(Image from Ffald-y-brenin Facebook Page)
I don’t know about you but I’ve long been something of a news junkie. I love to know more about what’s going on and trying to make some sense of the world we live in. And that’s a good thing, after all I think it was John Stott who talked about being people with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.
But there have been times in recent years with Brexit and now with this Coronavirus crisis when I’m noticing that too much news isn’t good for me. It makes me anxious and affects my mood, which in turn affects those around me. It’s also not good for my soul to focus more on the world and its worries than the God who loves me and holds me in his hand.
So I’ve been trying to do two things to help me spiritually and mentally:
1 Starting the day with the Bible and prayer before breakfast and no news until after breakfast. By putting God first, I put everything else into context. I have a friend in Cardiff who lives by the mantra, “No Bible, no breakfast!” That is worth considering!
2 Limiting the amount of news I consume. I find I can’t bear the weight of the world and trying is not good for me, but I need to know what’s going on too. So my answer is moderation. I’m not delving in to how steep the epidemic graph is in various countries or what percentage of people are dying from Covid-19 in Spain, I’m finding what I need to know and leaving the rest up to God.