“Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”
-Luke 24:18b

Have you heard the latest?

I doubt it. Unless you are punching that “refresh” button every five seconds, chances are you’ve missed some form of breaking news or another.

It’s hard to remember that it didn’t use to be like this. We got our news at 6pm everyday, or tossed onto our driveway each morning. We had something called a “news cycle”.

No more. Nowadays, newsflashes come in relentlessly, like waves on an angry sea.

I don’t know about you, but I’m drowning!

Every school shooting, every disaster, every scary executive order. Politicians don’t even wait for the press anymore. They post their unfiltered thoughts on ‘X’.

This is why many claim the Internet to be the best and worst invention in human history. There are too many sources of information. Too many “.coms” coming at us with slightly different takes.

I don’t know about you, but I need some de.compression. De .com pression. Get it? Some time to dry out from the constant deluge of all things internet.

I may be worse at this than most of you. I’m the guy hitting refresh. Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Tik Tok–you name it–I’m gleaning news stories from these all the time. And that doesn’t even count all the news sites I visit!

Part of it is FOMO, the fear of missing out. I don’t want to be like that traveler who met two disciples while walking to Emmaus. He seemed to be the only one who hadn’t heard the Easter news.

Except, wait. That traveler was Jesus.

Here was the very guy who caused all the ruckus, acting like he didn’t even know about it. Why did he act so ill-informed?

Maybe he wanted to hear it from somebody else. Maybe he was looking for an honest-to-God conversation with a couple of believers. Even though they didn’t know who he was, Jesus did a deep dive with them, not just tossing headlines back and forth, but sharing and discerning together.

We don’t really do that in our .com spaces. Unless you count message boards, which I most certainly do not. Those are less dialogue and more diatribe.

If I were to de.compress a little, and find some space, with other actual people, I might not feel so uptight and clenched all the time. There would be room to digest. Room to think and talk about other stuff, too. Now there’s a thought–an actual conversation that touches on a variety of subjects.

What would it be like to just check the news at 6pm each night? What if I was less coerced by sensational headlines and more attuned to the presence of Christ, both in the world, and right there in my midst?

If I cut back on the .com, would that just leave me with de pression? Would I convince myself that I’m not doing my civic duty? That would certainly not be the case, but it might take me a while to adjust.

But surfing the web isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Eventually one of those waves will send you reeling, and you’ll find yourself gasping for air.

Maybe I’ll take the afternoon to soak up some sun and de.compress. Let the world spin without me for an hour or two.

It’s nice enough outside, maybe I’ll grab a friend, touch some actual grass, and go for a walk.

You never know who you might run into.

Have a great week,

Mitch