After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” Acts 1:11

I barely watch the news anymore. And the opening MSN page that I hastily retreat from on my way to Facebook? I barely give it a glance. I don’t care about the Kardashian’s latest escapade, or what happened to Lindsey Lohan’s Mom. I scan the headlines to see if there is something I really need to know. I put my foot in the pond of world events and stay there long enough to know what is going on and then I get out. Looking around at our world today, it would be easy to cave in, to despair. To forget that there is still so much good.

I got to prayer late this morning. I allowed myself the luxury of going back to bed. Not to sleep, to read. I grabbed my cup of coffee and propped myself up on my pillows with two cats settled on either side and read all the way through to the end of “Odd Hours,” the fourth installment of the Odd Thomas book series by Dean Koontz. I felt the pressures of the week closing in and I wanted to close them out. I wanted to beat back time. I needed fiction. I needed to know that the terrible events happening in the book were just that, fiction. And that just maybe I would get a happy ending out of it.

I wasn’t disappointed. The bad guys died. Every single one. I needed that. I wanted to close the book and feel some relief that things are not nearly as bad in the world as the events in the book I just read.

Because all too often in real life the bad guys don’t die, or get caught, they thrive. They prey, they get away with murder. They steal from innocent people who are just trying to get through the day and keep what they worked so hard for. They show up at a Navy Yard and kill an innocent custodian among many others, who never failed to show up for work.  He was only doing his job. Like they all were.

Soon, we will have Obama care going into effect. It is something rich people and the politicians who pushed it through will not have to worry about. They will all have their own plans. They will not be bowed down with extra taxes if they fail to commit to a government plan. It’s the working people who will. We will be punished if we don’t buy into it. None of us asked for it, but we are getting it just the same. I don’t usually comment on politics on my site, because my hope doesn’t lay in any politician or world leader. Thank God.

And today, it hit me like a thunderbolt as I was coming home. It’s like I really got it. I knew why the early persecuted church found so much comfort in each other.

Where there is more turmoil in the world, there should be more love, more strength, more unity in the church.

We need to be reminded that our hope is in Christ and there is nothing we need to dread as long as we keep our focus on Him. That’s pretty much what my devotional said today and I needed to hear it.

Here is the last paragraph:

You inhabit a fallen, disjointed world, where things are constantly unraveling around the edges. Only a vibrant relationship with Me can keep you from coming unraveled too. Jesus Calling, Sarah Young

May this give you hope today, it does me. There is so much good still in the world. As long as we keep our eyes on Him, He will bring those things into our path and we will once again be recharged, renewed, imbibed with hope.

“Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done. Revelation 22:12