It might be hard to believe this, but it\u2019s been strangely restful over the last week not<\/em> to be able to keep up my usual devoted attention to what\u2019s going on in the world. Indeed, it was alarming, whichever day it was, to wake up, read that Britain was going to leave the EU, throw everything in the car, begin to drive, learn nothing more about it, and carry on breathing through the rest of the day. My appalling ignorance did not affect international markets, nor the outcome of anybody\u2019s vote. Furthermore, each day\u2019s news cycle passed me by and instead of beating back discouragement and outrage\u2013which is what a news cycle is meant to induce\u2013I glided ever higher up towards Mt. Shasta, listening to a James Harriet book and considering the beauty of this incredible continent. My mother, unable to contain herself, sang America the Beautiful and made all the children listen to her.<\/p>\n My knowing about the news of the day doesn\u2019t impact anything at all. The level of outrage that I do or do not lather up has no bearing on anything one way or another. But somehow, the way that news is propelled out into all the world, the way that Twitter flaps and cries, the insistent voice of the news caster, communicates that if you don\u2019t stay on for this next segment or read this next article, the whole world will come a tumbling down, and you wouldn\u2019t want that would you? So you read just a little more, or watch until the next commercial break.<\/p>\n And me, I get tired of the forced outrage. Brexit could have been the end of the world, but it looks like we all woke up the next morning. So something else must be going to precipitate the End of Everything.<\/p>\n But where the absence of knowledge of world events has been a rest, the shortness of each visit has been a bitter pill. I sat with my grandfather for a few minutes in the cool twilight, waiting for a single star to beat its way past the bright lights of Southern California, and felt deeply sorry that I know so little about his life\u2013his accomplishments, his motivations, the things that happened to him and my grandmother. When you\u2019ve collapsed in someone\u2019s living room after a long drive, you\u2019re apt to talk about the weather, or what happened last week, and there just isn\u2019t time to delve into what happened fifty years ago.<\/p>\n It\u2019s because in the deepest recesses of my broken mind, I\u2019m essentially a gossip. I want to hear the News, the scandals, whenever they happened. Somehow knowing about something makes me feel like I\u2019m in the thick of it, I played some part.<\/p>\n And it should be like that with the gospel, I think, just a little. It\u2019s not a News Cycle, it\u2019s just Good News. For the person who loves to pass on or receive a tidbit, going round telling people about Jesus should be thrilling. Except, of course, that it isn\u2019t. It\u2019s a terrifying proposition. It\u2019s liable to embarrass us all. It\u2019s exactly the kind of \u201cnews\u201d calculated to shut down everybody\u2019s good time.<\/p>\n Still, it\u2019s the only kind of news where the far flung hearer can really be caught up and brought into the events themselves. When you tell someone a snatch of the gospel, you\u2019re not relaying some curio from the past, you\u2019re not just passing on information. It\u2019s not something that happened back there and it\u2019s so interesting to know about it, but later, when you\u2019re sipping your evening Ovaltine and counting the tins in your cupboard, you\u2019ll completely forget and go on to think about something else. It\u2019s the one kind of News that once you know about it, you really can be right there in the middle of the fray\u2013the enchanting place where true knowledge produces something delectable. You know Jesus, and you are caught up in his life forever.<\/p>\n Have a lovely Sunday.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It might be hard to believe this, but it\u2019s been strangely restful over the last week not to be able to keep up my usual devoted attention to what\u2019s going on in the world. Indeed, it was alarming, whichever day it was, to wake up, read that Britain was going to leave the EU, throw […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2373,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,18],"tags":[23,48,57,63],"class_list":["post-4777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news","category-reading-the-bible","tag-anglicanism","tag-just-plain-spiritual","tag-politics","tag-traveling-with-children"],"yoast_head":"\n