By Ryan LeBlanc

My grandpa and I are both fasting from bad news. Well, we’re trying to.

On his new YouTube account, I’m trying to teach him about those crazy thumbnails and video titles that assault us with terrifying and shocking scenarios. You know, wide-eyed reactions and capital letters. “IS this famous person SECRETLY plotting DESTRUCTION?”

He’s 94 and I just cannot bear to see his peace disturbed by such senseless click-bait. But I’m just barely keeping myself from consuming the same stuff.

There’s just so much bad news out there, and it seems so compelling.

Evil Words Made Flesh – In Me

Bad news isn’t just information about an unfortunate event. Bad news sets my jaw clenching, my gut churning. When I get bad news into me, I need to get up and pace, my voice gets louder, and my brain… my brain focusses desperately on finding the clever phrase or intelligent insight that will protect me.

Bad news says the world’s destruction is coming for me.

It doesn’t matter what your perspective is, it seems. Even if you and I are polar opposites in our opinions, we will always share one thing in common: we won’t have to look too far before we find the bad news that we’re dreading – the worst news. Or rather, it will find us.

That one leader does something evil. The opposing leader is completely justified. Violence ticks up one notch, and never comes back down.

Does it have to be that way? Do I have to live locked in a constant struggle against a world that refuses to make sense to me the way I want it to?

The Word of the Lord

My grandpa and I both read Psalm 37. “Do not fret because of the wicked… Trust in the Lord, and do good; so you will live in the land, and enjoy security.”

In the midst of so much anxiety and frustration, God’s word brings good news.

Good news is not easy news. It might not immediately comfort me in the moment. But the good news, the best news, is that God will never let anything truly harm me.

The security I seek is in knowing I will not be lost.

When bad news challenges me, manipulates me with fear and triggers my defenses, God says to me, “Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath. Do not fret—it leads only to evil.”

Because this is the truth of the matter: only God prevails.

All Worldly Things Pass

That bad guy who has me all churned up, his kingdom and power and glory are “like smoke they vanish away.” The reality of the world today is broken and hurting, it is true, but the bad news is an illusion, a lie that says evil wins.

The only way that evil wins is if I believe in its power.

If I hand over my peace, I am affirming that the bad guy can actually get me and God cannot protect me. Without my peace, I am locked up in my pacing, fretting, wrathful emptiness.

In the end, every evil deed won’t last. It won’t even last for a miniscule news cycle.

“Yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more…”

Love Abides

My grandpa and I close the laptop. We sip tea and catch up. We tell the same stories we’ve told before. Some of them have some sadness. But it’s all good news.

What were we getting so worked up about before? Whatever it was, it’s gone now.

We’re grateful for each other, and we say it.

“The Lord helps [us] and rescues [us]; he rescues [us] from the wicked, and saves [us], because [we] take refuge in him.”

Read all of Psalm 37 here. www.biblegateway.com

-30-

Ryan LeBlanc is a teacher at Bethlehem Catholic High School in Saskatoon and a parishioner at the Cathedral of the Holy Family. His writing is available on his blog at ryanleblanc.podia.com

Catholic Saskatoon News is supported by gifts to the Bishop’s Annual Appeal: dscf.ca/baa.