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Devotional Thought:

In recent months (years, actually), I’ve found myself getting discouraged when I watch the news. Sometimes I get downright angry. 

Road rage, senseless killings, racism, terrorism, hate-filled people. There’s so much evil in our world, and it’s getting worse. 

Some might say it’s just better not to watch the news. Maybe that’s true. But it’s impossible to exist in our high-tech, always connected world without hearing about all the evil around us. How should we respond?

Sadly, I often find myself getting angry and discouraged.

Last week I was listening to a recording of the psalms, and I heard something that impacted me deeply. I’ve heard/read this psalm hundreds, if not thousands, of times. But last week, the words of psalm 37 caught my heart in a new way.

I don’t have the space to go into the whole psalm here, but three times the psalmist tells us: “Do not fret because of evildoers.” In verse 8, he pointedly says, “Do not fret–it leads only to evil.”

When I read that, I realized how much I’d been fretting over evildoers and their success in this world. I also understood that such fretting only hurts me (“It leads only to evil.”)

What’s the alternative? 

The psalmist gives four appropriate responses:

1. Trust in the Lord (v. 3)

2. Delight in the Lord (v. 4)

3. Commit your way to the Lord (v. 5)

4. Be still before the Lord (v. 7)

5. Refrain from anger and turn from wrath (v. 8)

Rather than responding in anger to the world around me, I should commit my way to the Lord and calmly trust in him.