James Talarico

Like you open your phone, you turn on the TV, like you're just flooded with bad news from all over the country, all over the world.

And like, I feel hopelessness, I feel despair, like tugging at me, you know?

And I don't think you'd be a human if you didn't feel that sometimes.

And when I feel this,

kind of hopelessness tempting me, there's a verse of Scripture that I return to, and I would love to offer it to your listeners, again, whether they're a Christian or not, whether they're religious or not.

It's in the Gospel of Luke when Jesus says something really strange.

He says, "'Blessed are you who weep.'"

Which is a strange thing to say, because how can someone who's weeping be...

considered blessed.

In our country, like in our culture, those two things are mutually exclusive, right?

Being blessed means to be happy all the time and to give what you want.

But I think what Jesus is trying to tell us from 2000 years ago is that grief can be fertile soil.

Something new and beautiful can grow out of that grief.

So for anyone who's listening whose heart

is breaking as they watch what's happening to our country and to our world, I would just say that means you still have a heart.

And I would ask you to trust that, to protect that, because that is what's going to get us out of all this at the end of the day.

So blessed are you who weep.

Thank you.

Appreciate you.

If you can't afford gas, if you can't afford insurance, if you can't afford childcare, if you can't afford housing, none of that is gonna get better until we fix this corrupt political system.