A few weeks ago, I had legitimately lost hope. I was consumed by the news and every day was weighted underneath a blanket of grief, anxiety, and despair. Part of me tried to snap out of it. The other part of me kept binging information. I took a walk with my friend and said, “I don’t think I can live another 50 years like this.” Meaning, I cannot keep standing in the water as one devastation after another crash like merciless waves on my heart.
If you’ve been around me recently, you know that every day my thoughts return to Genesis and also Oppenheimer— both stories of what can happen when humankind does not embrace limitations.
We scroll. Our eyes open. We, too, become like God. The power of life and death leaves our tongues and enters our weapons. Our politics. Our policies.
The whole world escapes God’s hands to enter ours, thanks to Apple and Meta and TikTok.
And anxiety skyrockets and hope dissolves because each of us has a three pound brain that is ill-equipped to play the role of God.
A few days after I went on that walk, I was at a coffee shop asking God what to do. How do I embrace my limitations without digging my head in the sand. How do I actually love people in Gaza and Israel and not virtue signal to make myself feel better. How do I not center myself while simultaneously respecting myself. How do I have hope when I cannot imagine a peaceful, more just world.
Then two elderly Black men stood up at the table next to mine; one grabbing his cane, the other his iPhone. The man on the left held out his arm to take a selfie. A selfie! And you know when an iPhone is set to timer mode and the flash blinks to signal the countdown? Well, this phone started flashing for ten full seconds and they sat there, smiling, completely still. After the picture took, the man on the right said, “You’ve got a timer on that thing?” And the man on the left said, “Sure do. I bet you have one on yours, too!” And he suggested they take one more selfie in case one of them was blinking in the first. His arm went out. Ten seconds, signaled by ten flashes, crawled by as they stood there like grinning statues.
I watched this interaction and felt a thrill of hope. Tears fell. These men, both with southern accents, grew up in a brutally harsh world. But there they were, taking a 10-second selfie in their 80s, smiling. Light.
They left and I wept, closing my eyes and whispering, “Thank you, thank you, thank you” to them. Witnessing their interaction pulled me out of big overwhelm and into the peace of small presence. I started noticing more small moments- a dad at Target asking a stranger (me!) for help finding red lipstick for his daughter’s first movie (Taylor Swift!), a woman in the airport expressing anxiety about her first time flying and other passengers explaining the process to her in detail, a man and woman on their 50s holding hands and yelling, “That’s my boy!” from the 3rd row as they watched their son play a sold-out show.
The news is true- we are doing overwhelmingly horrible, violent, horrific things to one another. And the other parts are true, too. The evil doesn’t cancel out the good, and the good doesn’t silence the evil. They are allowed to exist at the same time. We are allowed to hold space both the horror and the magic of humanity… otherwise we will sink in the darkness or live in naive ignorance.
I don’t know what I’m trying to say, except I have been rescued by these moments from the grip of despair. If you are looking around and feeling swallowed up by hopelessness, I genuinely pray you witness something beautiful today.
Sending all my love to you.
-Savannah
Great piece, Savannah, thank you. We are in strange times, especially as we have entered from calmer times - all of a sudden there are explosions of things that are harbingers of potential despair. I like your personal and yet graphic reflection on "the times", signs of the times (Mt 24:43). There have been beautiful sunrises lately, amazingly beautiful
Savannah, I was sad for you when I read the opening section: "I had legitimately lost hope. I was consumed by the news". By the end I was encouraged. Blessings