I’ve been alive long enough to have lived through several seasons of cultural upheaval. The current season may well be the most intense. When so much is happening, and people are taking sides, lobbing their perspectives like mortars into other people’s lives, it is too easy to lose our focus, and as a result, lose our joy.

We should never allow even the most critically-defined issues of the day to draw us away from what really matters – loving others and expressing the joy of simply being alive and experiencing the goodness of God. 

Put down your smartphone. Put it down when a friend sends you yet another message claiming “you have to read this now” or “this video is a game-changer” while your child is tugging on your sleeve, wondering where the mommy or daddy they love has gone since all the pandemic, and election uproar began. Don’t let it happen to you.

Spouses whose emotions have become thinner by the day are now harsh, short, and critical with each other. Liked a cocked and loaded emotional firearm, they are ready to fire at each other over the smallest of issues. Marital intimacy is now at risk. Don’t let it happen to you.

A pedestrian waits at a crosswalk, and instead of doing the right thing and slowing to let them pass, an angry proclamation is issued from behind a steering wheel, and the accelerator is floored to show them who is the boss. Don’t let it happen to you.

The most critical issue in this pandemic and heated election cycle is not what side of an argument we find ourselves. The most critical issue from God’s perspective is what is happening to the condition of our hearts. 

The thief of joy is afoot, and he is working overtime to thin out our resolve to love other people and create in us a joyless life, leaving us with a sad and sorrow-filled outcome – being left alone with our opinion. Don’t let it happen to you.