by Eugene Higgins
The News and the New
The lines of a hymn have been running through my mind the last few days.
While blessed with a sense of His love,
A palace a toy would appear;
And prisons would palaces prove,
If Jesus would dwell with me there.
The overall tenor of the hymn from which those words are quoted is that of a struggling believer, wondering why the happier days of his past were not being enjoyed in the present. I knew the book in which the hymn appeared, and who the two authors of the hymnal were. I assumed, (again from its tenor), that the poem was written by the frequently morose one of the pair, William Cowper, (pronounced, “Cooper”), who was prone to bouts of severe depression and very often needed equilibrium-restoring encouragement from his close friend, John Newton. (Perhaps Cowper was depressed because he knew that generations of Christians in the future would mispronounce his name, placing him in the bovine family). Imagine my surprise to find that the author was not Cowper, but Newton. Maybe Cowper’s melancholia was contagious, I don’t know. But Newton at least expresses that no matter what his condition might be, “December’s as pleasant as May” when he is enjoying the presence of the Lord Jesus.
So I wonder whether we are viewing our personal prisons as “palaces”? Is it a Buckingham or a Bastille? Or, in a reversal of what Newton wrote, does our May (wasn’t it March – 2 long months ago – when all this started?) feel more like December? Apparently one of the effects of the Wuhan virus is to make normally gentle people become violent, and happily married people think about divorce. “Experts” have noted with growing alarm a recent and dramatic surge in both of those areas; so much so that doctors are advising people to refrain from making any rash decisions while under lockdown – no big moves, no new house purchases, no job changes, no strangling of spouses. Who knew this virus could be so deadly! I mean shortness of breath, excruciating chest pain, extreme weakness, loss of taste and smell – all that is bad enough. But now this! Wives resorting to violence just because their husbands are home 24 hours a day!
Actually, the disruption of the domestic tranquility is not due to a mysterious code in the virus; it is the result of the extended lockdown that is a result of the virus; or rather it is the result of the governmental imposition of the lockdown in reaction to the virus. The mood of many is reflected in two new words that are doing the rounds and bidding for OED inclusion: “doomscrolling” and “doomsurfing.” That does not mean using a surfboard to get close-up pictures of great whites off the coast of Australia. These are new terms referring to the tendency to continue to “surf or scroll through bad news, even though that news is saddening, disheartening, or depressing.” Here is another direct quote: “Many people are finding themselves reading continuously bad news about COVID-19 without the ability to stop or step back.” So people are purposely seeking out depressing news (not hard to find) and then overdosing on it like lumberjacks at an all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast! And they can’t “stop or step back.” (Addiction is a horrible thing.)
The impact the media are having on our collective psyche is profound and devastating. It did not require a vast amount of the “tiny grey cells” for me to realize that I always felt very “down,” a kind of indescribable malaise of the spirit, after ingesting the news. Generally, whether reading online or in print, I found that the beliefs I held were being denigrated, the hopes I had were being dashed, and the things I loved were being derided. So much for faith, hope, and love from the Times or the Post or the Globe!
May I recommend you turn from the strepitous voices of the “news” media and remind yourself of the “new” things God is planning. His words and wisdom will invigorate you while their braying and snorting and neighing are positively enervating and depressing. I find it significant that that word “new” plays such a large part in God’s future program and therefore in John’s vocabulary. Nine times in seven verses in the Book of Revelation, John uses that word. Combining the passages reveals to us these eternally “new” things:
- A New Name: Rev 2:17, “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.” Rev 3:12, “And I will write upon him My new name.” The Lord Jesus renamed people when He was here, giving them new names based on what He knew of their character. When, in Heaven, He bestows your new name, it may indicate that you will be allowed to learn something of the joy He took in your having “held fast” His name (2:13). Similar to our enjoying the “hidden manna” and having revealed to us things about the Lord Jesus that we did not and could not grasp before, when He writes upon you His new name it will mean your enjoying something about Him that you did not know before.
- A New City: Rev 3:12, “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from My God.” Rev 21:2, “And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” The old Jerusalem once rang with the cry “Crucify!” Through its streets, bloodied and beaten, He made His way to Calvary. While He yet will have honor in that ancient city, the New Jerusalem will ring eternally with nothing but praise and honor to the One Who is its light.
- A New Song: Rev 5:9, “And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.” Rev 14:3, “And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth.” We have sung thousands of times of His worthiness, but this will be the moment when, at last, He takes the book and begins the events that will lead to “the day of the gladness of His heart.” How we will sing to Him then when we realize the time has come for Him to receive His long-awaited honor and glory in this world!
- A New Cosmos: Rev 21:1, “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.” Not just chronologically “new” but characteristically so – a new kind of Heaven and Earth. When the announcement is made, “Behold the tabernacle of God [is] with men,” it will be the evidence that the work of Emmanuel (“God with us”) has forever secured the safety and bliss of that new universe. Josiah Condor has taken you there, in thought, countless times, hasn’t he?
Throughout the universe of blissThe centre Thou, and Sun,Th’ eternal theme of praise is this,To heaven’s beloved One. Worthy, O Lamb of God art Thou That every knee to Thee should bow
The glorious summation of all this is in Rev 21:5, “And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And He said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.”
If we have to bring our thoughts back to earth, here is good “news” for a Monday morning: “His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness” (Lam 3:22, 23). The following is not original, but that should make it all the better: “The English word ‘new’ is the Hebrew word ‘hadas’ … It means ‘never before experienced.’ Today’s mercy is different from yesterday or the day before or the day before the day before. Just as the seasonal flu vaccine changes from year to year, God’s mercy changes from day to day. It’s a new strain of mercy … Try this little exercise: Figure out how old you are—not in years but in days. That’s the sum total of different kinds of mercy you’ve received life-to-date. By the time you’re twenty-one, you’ve experienced 7,665 unique mercies. When you hit midlife, it numbers 14,600. And by the time you hit retirement, God has ‘mercied’ you 23,725 times.”
Now that’s “news-worthy,” if anything is.