Unafraid of the news

Evil tidings — bad news — is one of the oldest fears there is, and the modern world has industrialised its delivery. The phone can bring it any minute, and knows how to make you check. Notice what this verse does not promise the faithful: a life without such tidings. The blessing is aimed somewhere else entirely.

His heart is fixed. Fixed as in fastened — attached to something that does not move when the news does. The unfixed heart rises and falls with every headline and every unread message, because it is attached to outcomes. The fixed heart has its anchor upstream of outcomes: trusting in the LORD, who is not surprised by any tidings and outlasts all of them.

This fixedness is built in advance — that is the practical point. You cannot fasten an anchor during the storm. The daily verse, the morning prayer, the remembered faithfulness: this is fastening work, done in calm hours, for the sake of the loud ones. Whatever arrives today, arrives at a heart already attached.