If you let it, all the bad news coming from everywhere can be overwhelming. If you choose to get your information from the news outlet of your choice, you will think that the whole world is headed to hell in a hand-basket.

But there’s a freedom that comes when you learn to let go of what you can’t control. There’s a beauty that comes from surrendering what you were never meant to bear in the first place. It never was your job to fix every wrong and to right every injustice. That has always been God’s job.

Your job is to trust and obey. Part of that obedience and trust comes in leaving to God what belongs to God and not to you. If you try to take on the weight of the world and all its myriad problems, it will crush you. But if you leave it in the nail-scarred hands, it will free you.

It also helps to know that while the middle of the story looks bad, the end of the story has never been in doubt. You can look to the last pages of the Bible to see that. There will be no more wars or rumors of war. No more death or disease. No more hatred and animosity.

There’s a wedding and a feast coming. And you’re invited. And, as C. S. Lewis put it in the last Narnia book, The Last Battle, this life will have only been the preface to the real story of heaven and beyond, where each chapter is better than the one before and where the story has a happy ending that never truly ends.