For at least eleven years, I feel like I have started many blog posts and sermons by talking about how overwhelming the news cycle is. At this point, that observation almost sounds trite. It risks becoming one of those phrases that gets repeated so often that it loses its impact, like “we’re living in unprecedented times” or “out of an abundance of caution” during the COVID era.
But the truth is that we are living in a unique moment in human history. At a moment’s notice, or with a simple glance at a phone, we have access to information about suffering, violence, disasters, and crises from all over the world. And I think two things are true at once:
On one hand, these stories can feel incredibly close. They can be overwhelming, especially when we encounter many of them at once. Until very recently in human history, people simply did not have access to this much information about what was happening across the globe.
On the other hand, these stories can also feel very far away, too. It is easy to become numb. It’s easy to forget, at least emotionally, that there are actual people behind these headlines. These people have names, faces, relationships, fears, hopes, and stories. Of course, we do not need to look halfway around the world to find suffering. We encounter it in our own neighborhoods, our own communities, our own families, and often in our own lives, too.
But I was thinking about all of this recently while hearing news reports about countries trading “strikes.” Yes, that is technically accurate language. It describes something that is happening. But are those the words that people would use if they were living through those strikes?
That phrase feels distant from the human realities on the ground. Nobody wakes up in the middle of the night thinking, “A strike occurred.” They wake up wondering where their child is. They wonder whether their home will still be standing in the morning. They wonder whether today is the day that ordinary life suddenly falls apart. They wonder whether the next loud sound means they should run.
Behind the language are people who are frightened, grieving, searching, hoping, enduring, and barely surviving. The news cycle does not always help us remember that.
So what do we do?
I think we remember what the language leaves out. We remember that people exist in the margins and in the rubble. And I think there is also enough suffering within our own communities and relationships to bring that close to us and allow us to feel it. We can remember the people behind the headlines elsewhere, too.
The truth is, we are more connected than we often realize — something that is also true in our globalized era. Their lives are not as distant from ours as they may seem. We can choose to act in ways that reach our neighbors here and people who live seemingly far away.
And we can stay connected to the values that matter most to us. These are unique times. But we are not as powerless as we sometimes think.
—Renee Roederer
Smuggling Grace 