Keeping Me Sane | 3.13.25
A catalog of things that have brought me joy, caused me to think, or have helped to keep me sane in these insane times
With AI improving rapidly, fake images and videos can look shockingly real, making it easier for rage-inducing media to spread. This is a serious problem in any society, but even more so in a deeply polarized one.
The problem is twofold. First, some people deliberately create and share “fake news” in order to arouse rage. In 2023, researchers described a phenomenon they called the “need for chaos” — a willingness to spread false political rumors and create discord due to extreme pessimism and anger.
Second, people are more likely to believe and share things that confirm their fear of and outrage toward the “other side.” The more divided a society is, the more demand for content that aligns with those us-versus-them views (and this applies even to information created with the best of intentions).
This creates a vicious cycle: Fake news spreads, fueling more outrage. That outrage amplifies our divides, boosting demand for more divisive (and often false) content.
We all have a role to play in making the world a less toxic and divided place. One easy thing we can all do is to try to avoid sharing fake, rage-inducing content.
I read Send Out Your Light by Sandra McCracken last year and wrote a little about her words here.
As with so many things I read, her words settled in my heart and I come back to them often! These words below are currently bringing me hope and comfort—
I will not apologize for God’s mysterious providence, knowing that often in suffering, God is doing His most beautiful work. But I will affirm there are ongoing sorrows that need mending, that need attention and care and healing that only God can provide.
The more we know ourselves to be weak, the more we recognize how mighty our Savior is, how eager He is to break into darkness with His light…
The One who will bring this restoration has not come to rewrite our stories, but to redeem them…
When we cultivate our imagination according to the story God has written, we begin to see these messages of hope all around us…
The more we have a vision for what will be, the more levity and endurance we will have in our present struggles.
—Send Out Your Light, pp. 260 and 262-263
You guys, this made me laugh out loud and also cringe a bit. This poor, GORGEOUS(!!), and literally hot woman.
I’m not quite there yet but wow!!
THIS! This is what community is all about!
{side note: if you haven’t watched Shrinking yet, what are you waiting for? It’s amazing—full of so much love, joy, truth, pain, friendship, and real life.}
This article brought me to tears, gave me so much hope, and challenged me to look for solid, concrete ways to love my neighbors—
Lately, it has been far easier to despair than to love concretely. The Trump administration’s strategy of flooding the zone has made me feel powerless and overwhelmed — which is, as Adam Russell Taylor recently described it, precisely the point. Even while wrestling with lament, I’ve wanted to move toward contributing to addressing injustice to counter the pervasive injustice that occupies so much of our news. But I’ve just not known how. I’ve felt that nothing in my sphere of direct influence is grand enough to move any kind of needle.
But being a faithful follower of Christ is, in fact, less about giving a virtuoso solo performance and more often playing a small part in a great work we cannot fully comprehend.
The prescription for faithfulness, which generations of God’s people have clung to through countless challenging political situations — from exile to Roman occupation to modern dictators — is simple: “Love the Lord thy God and love thy neighbor as thyself” (Matthew 22:37-40). Simple, but so small. Love thy neighbor, really? Is that all you got?
But as straightforward as this command seems, it is something I repeatedly fail to do — even as I wring my hands over all the big issues that plague our country.
I can’t even love one neighbor in a Target checkout, let alone my more distant neighbors whose situations I only know through the onslaught of headlines. Trying to love people in abstraction is paralyzing and feeds despair. What if small neighborly love is the beginning of moving out of despair and pushing the needle toward a more just world?This was, after all, the way of Jesus. For those longing for political salvation — a longing I resonate with — I imagine Jesus’s simple commandment to his disciples was something of a disappointment (Acts 1:6). Jesus’s love was earthy, embodied, slow: quietly rescuing newlyweds from a shameful catering disaster, healing one sick woman, restoring a blind man’s sight. Jesus did not overthrow injustice in the way we or his disciples might have expected. If overturning Rome was the goal, then Jesus didn’t move the needle toward that end. The kingdom of heaven, Jesus said, is small like a mustard seed, like leaven; it is insignificant, unremarkable.
But mustard seeds grow and leaven expands. All these centuries later, his followers are still trying to follow his pattern of loving God and neighbor, and the Roman Empire is no more.
We do not love our neighbors in isolation, but as members of a great collective, sharing in each other’s small acts of love. Our individual acts are connected to the body of the church and the power of God at work in us. When I love my neighbor in Target, in some mysterious way, it is woven into the symphony that is God acting in the world. The renewing love of God acting in this world is made manifest in my own small acts, but it is not limited to them.
When we love our neighbors with God, the same power at work in Jesus is at work in us. God invites our participation —but let’s not kid ourselves about who is really doing the restoration. And while love thy neighbor may fulfill the whole of the law, that’s not why we do it. I think God could love my neighbors just fine without my help. It is for the sake of joy that we are invited to participate in God’s renewing, redemptive, boundary-crossing, expansive love. Who’s having more fun: the one hoarding his own lunch or the one who offers it up to share, then watches a few loaves feed thousands of people?
I think back to how I might have handled that situation at Target differently: What if I had paid more attention to the woman, read the distress in her eyes? I keep asking myself: How could I have shown her love? I never paused to find out. But if I had extended myself to see her, to care for her, would it have blessed us both?
Good morning, from Sunday the Golden Retriever—
What are you focusing on today or this week to keep hope from being extinguished?
What reminder of hope and goodness stood out to you recently?
I’d love to know — please share in the comments or reply via email. 💜
