My wife bought the fourth season of West Wing for me recently. I'm a huge West Wing fan. But, I've also noticed that I show signs of addiction. Yesterday I watched four episodes--straight. And I can be down-right irritable whenever I'm watching it. Which makes no sense whatsoever. If I miss something due to interruption, I can always go back and watch it again. More importantly, it's insane to put a TV program above people. Of course, as much as I like to think I'm the only one in the world wired quite the way I am, I know that all of us from time to time exaggerate the importance of unimportant things at the expense of others. We'll talk about an expensive cup off coffee with words like "need" and "have to have." We'll argue about sports questions on call-in radio programs. We get upset when people cut us off in traffic. Yet, we seem unaffected by the big problems. The truly catastrophic problems of the world--hunger, poor education, the loss of a collective conscience--do not seem to get to us in quite the same way. Yes, they bother us but they don't get quite the same rise out of us as our "pet peeves."
I think, perhaps, this has to do with power. Perhaps we get energized by small things because we can do something about the small things. These big issues are beyond our control. We lack the resources to solve them. Daily, it seems, we must be reminded that we serve a God who will ultimately take care of the big things and who calls us not to solve the whole problem but to do our part. That begins, I believe, through a daily time with God where we ask God to help us prioritize and determine our response. I suspect that's summed up in the prayer we make, "Thy kingdom come."
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