Good News...but from where?

   I joyfully opened the boxes that arrived the previous day. Along with new microphones, new cables, and even new amplifiers, our shipment included a new mixing board. It was a Yamaha MG206 with ten more channels than the previous one we were using. 

Yamaha MG206 Mixer

   As the name implies, a mixing board allows the inputs to be mixed into one unified sound before being outputted to the speakers. A channel on a sound board is the name for the place where an audio signal comes in before being tweaked and modified and then sent out with any/all of the other signals to produce the sound everyone in the audience hears. Live music, like the inspiring kind delivered every week in worship, can be understood as blending a variety of inputs to create a beautiful output.
   Which makes me think...
   There are good things happening in the world. I promise. I know it. You know it. But you wouldn't know it from the coverage given to these acts of goodness and grace by those in the news. Most of the news seems bad, most of the time. These are the inputs that many of us hear most of the time. And, it is not only the news outlets that are pushing such negativity our way. We have friends who dwell on the negative. Our own thinking can veer that way, too often. Some weeks it seems all we hear is negative.
   If mixing live music beautifully depends on the beauty of the inputs that come in, can the same be said of our own lives, and our own minds? I think so. When every message we hear, or read, or consumer, is one of bad news or one that causes angst, creating a beautiful sound is all that more difficult. Over time, it might become impossible. Jesus taught that there would be tragedy and trouble in our lives (Matthew 24) but he went on to encourage his disciples to gather in order that Good News might be proclaimed.
   Let me be clear - we must intentionally place ourselves to receive the inputs of Good News that God is so diligently sending our way. This can happen in countless ways, but the church believes it happens best, over time, in a small group setting. Put another way, you need to be in Sunday School or a small group that weekly delivers Good News into your life. 
   Grace and Peace, Scott