I don’t know what to say, and I certainly don’t know what to do about all the turmoil in our country.

So much anger. Travesty and injustice.

An uncovering of the evil in human hearts.

A sadness at the wickedness in mine.

So many voices clamoring. Enough opinions to fill the sky.

Pandemic or politics or current events–you can find someone to say what you want to say, what you want to believe.

And you can find someone to make you doubt what you thought was true.

We all have bias because of our circle of influence. No one is exactly right.

So I can’t believe everything someone else thinks. I can’t believe everything I think.

The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it? Jeremiah 17:9

Is anyone else just tired of all the words?

How are we to navigate the distortion of facts? How are we to find truth?

This is what God’s wisdom looks like: Pure, peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. (James 3:17)

He is our truth, our light. His words are alive and powerful, eternal and right. It is only as we align ourselves with Him that we can walk a straight path, a path of truth.

So I keep turning my face to the hope of the gospel, the good news that changes us and changes our future. I love the core of it, the truth of it. God looked down on our evil, straying hearts. Hearts that continually pushed Him away, running and turning and seeking anything but Him. He looked down on disobedience and faulty thinking and rebellion. He looked down on murder and deceitfulness and sin of every kind.

And He loved us. Every one of us. Enough to send His only Son to pay for it all.

Let that be the beginning of turning your heart and face toward Him.

Let that pierce your deepest gloom.

He says, Come.

Come with your weariness. Come with your thirst. Come with your sin and brokenness. Come with your struggle.

Bring your bias and your evil heart and just come.

Come and find rest.

Some day He will rule with strength and kindness. Some day every knee will bow to Him. Someday peace will flow like a river.

How I long for it more and more.

Until then, He will continue to do a work in me. He will teach me and stretch me and grow me. He will use all this earthly chaos to make me more like His Son.

This trouble is His intended, refining fire.

And what does He want of me? The world’s problems are not mine to solve. He doesn’t expect me to have all the answers. In my sphere, He wants me to be just. In my story, He expects me to love kindness. In my life, I can walk humbly with Him.

He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8

I can seek Him and His truth. I can fear and obey and follow after righteousness. I can strive to love Him with my soul and strength and might.

And as I learn to love Him, I understand a little more about the truest, best kind of love.

As I learn to love Him, He teaches me what it means to love my neighbor as myself.

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:36-40