18th January 2026
Good News for a Worried World
The news, since the start of 2026, has been for the most part alternately depressing and terrifying. We awoke on New Year's Day to the news of a terrible fire in a bar in Switzerland, followed by frightening headlines from Venezuela, Iran, Greenland... And, of course, the people of Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Ethiopia and many other places continue to suffer the chronic and acute agonies of war, instability and oppression and the economic realities of the climate crisis. How can we find hope for a world whose capacity for self-harm seems limitless?
I've noticed, alongside the news bulletins, that certain psalms have been repeated already several times since the beginning of January. The psalms chosen by Common Worship at Morning and Evening Prayer are psalms that speak of God's kingship, revealed "among the nations" - which is psalm-speak for "among those who don't know God". In particular, we've prayed Psalms 2, 9 and 46 several times, and their words have resonated afresh amidst the headlines of 2026.
"Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?" asks the psalmist at the beginning of Psalm 2. He goes on to express the foolishness of rules who think they can plot against God - because "He who sits in the heavens laughs..." The foolishness of rulers who think they can do exactly what they want is also a theme of Psalm 9. "The nations have sunk in the pit that they made; in the net that they hid has their own foot been caught." And Psalm 46, the psalm that we pray on Remembrance Sunday, is a reminder that, in troubled times, "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help..."
Praying these psalms over the past fortnight has reminded me that, however dark, complex and troubled the world seems to be, God is still in charge. It has reminded me that, even when they seem to be absent everywhere, truth and integrity still matter. When we or others, however powerful or powerless, try to set a trap by our words and our plotting, in the end, we will be caught in our own snare. And it has reminded me that God is not far from the suffering of his world and of the fragile, broken, messed-up creatures whom he loves. Jesus was born into a world that was troubled, violent and messed up, where the mighty thought they could do what they liked and the poor lived out the consequences. Jesus came, as Immanuel, to share in the sufferings and sorrows of the world, and, ultimately, to bear them, himself, in his own body on the cross.
Perhaps the best we can do when the world is in turmoil around us is to heed God's voice expressed in Psalm 46:
"Be still and know that I am God!
I am exalted among the nations.
I am exalted in the earth."
And to pray "without ceasing" (1 Thessalonians 5:13) - for those in power, for those suffering the brunt of the world's devastations, and for the establishment of God's kingdom of justice and peace throughout the world.
