And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem. And they said to me, “The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.” As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven.
- from Nehemiah 1:2-4

How do you respond to bad news? In today’s passage, Nehemiah resists two temptations that show up alongside every occasion of bad news and instead chooses a middle pathway.

The first temptation that comes with bad news is the temptation to jump into immediate activism. Before the news even sinks in we spring into action. “FIX IT!!!” we shout. Our hands become a blur of action. We send emails, sling money around, hurl platitudes, and spin along dizzily while the whole time the emotional impact of the bad news continues to dog our heels and the spiritual import runs unnoticed. We have little to show in the long term for all of that knee-jerk activity.

The second temptation falls on the far other end of the spectrum: apathetic sympathy. We may nod to the bad news, acknowledging its existence, but we refuse to grapple with the badness of the bad news. We make sympathetic noises but don’t grieve, don’t engage, don’t actually care. In our world that’s so full of publicly consumable crises, it’s difficult to resist the pull of apathetic sympathy. We know this.

But Nehemiah’s pathway in the face of bad news carries him to a place of prayerful engagement. This way of grappling with bad news involves our hearts as well as our knees. We do something – prayer is something – but we don’t isolate our emotional and spiritual selves from the activity. We feel the badness of the bad news, acknowledge its badness, even while our minds and hands begin to ramp up to the hard work of doing what we can to help.

The Lord is present in our lives and history, whether the news is good or bad. When his people practice prayerful engagement, they discover that their activist God is already deeply engaged: bringing restoration, resisting evil, and generating hope.

What difficulties have you found over the years with the practice of prayerful engagement? What truths, promises or disciplines have helped you to practice prayerful engagement in the face of bad news?