Dear Lord,
I’m always carping when I’m trying to do something and You change it up on me in a way that in my myopia seems ruinous, so let me not be slow to praise when You change it up on me in a way where Your profound goodness is so evident. Thank You so much! The world offers “doomscrolling,” and I eat it up all the time. Some of us self-destruct. The doomscrolling type. We kill our own hope. We kill our own sanity. We feed our own cancers. That’s what we do. But then there’s what You do. The doomscrolling was now going on in my head and I was trying to take my mind off of it with some internet browning, but I was starting to realize it was a bad idea because my stream was just a reflection of my gloomy habits of mind. Just then, from this little corner of IG where beauty and grace and hope live, You broke into my stream of consciousness and spoke, “Do Not Despair.”
You invented it, Lord, so help me name it. Hopescrolling? Redeemscrolling? I sort of like redeemscrolling because it almost has doomscrolling in it. Replace the two o’s for e’s and you put a re- in front of it. Repurposing doomscrolling. But it sounds kind of clunky. Too many syllables. Oh, what about DEENscrolling?! Yes, let’s go with that. Deenscrolling. When you scroll through and envelop yourself in wisdom, faith, hope because despite the tentacles of the algorithm ensnaring in the dark stream, the hand of the One who orders all things toward the good, toward Your very self, catches hold of you adrift in the stream and says, “O creatures of God.” In other words, you are mine. I know what I made. Sure, you “have wronged [your]selves.” You’ve made mistakes. You tried to fashion yourself, cultivate your tastes, your style, your mind, your life, and you mucked up my creation, but do not despair, don’t be disheartened. I’ve still got you. I will fashion you anew, clothe you in my mercy, clothe you in hope, in strength, in confidence(,) in me. Lord, bless those who give themselves to be media of such a message. Bless my fellow doomscrollers and make us all deenscrollers. Followers of You, hanging by the threads of Your wisdom, will, mercy, and love.
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A.S.