Humans weren’t designed to carry the weight of the world in the palm of our hands.

Yet we try.

Never have humans been more ​“in the know” than in this era of the smartphone. And never — at least since such things have measured in North America — have we been more anxious and lonely.

“It’s traumatizing to subject yourself to the heartache of the entire planet,” John Eldredge commented on the Renovaré Podcast this week. ​“The human soul is not God. We’re not able to sustain these things.”

True. But we can’t just crawl in a hole. It doesn’t seem right to pretend like nothing is happening on the other side of the world or even the other side of our state. What do we do?

First of all, he suggests minimizing news intake. Most of us don’t need to know in real time the death toll of the pandemic.

This helps. But even if we unplug, life will throw a tremendous amount of painful situations our way. What do we do with those?

Eldredge suggests we practice benevolent detachment.

Perhaps this phrase resonates with you. Or perhaps you feel some resistance to it as I did.

At first blush it feels like a cop out, a shrug to the world’s woes. Benevolent detachment isn’t that. It is releasing to God those things over which we have no control. It is responding, like Corrie ten Boom’s sister did to a vision of horrible times ahead, ​“This too is in His hands.”

We see benevolent detachment in the life of Jesus. He wasn’t paralyzed by the pain of everyone on the planet, even though he knew he wouldn’t immediately take it all away. He loved perfectly and he loved presently. He went where God called him to go, did the work of justice he was called to do, and loved the person right in front of him. And even if that person walked away — like the rich young ruler — Jesus entrusted him to God.

So, Father, teach us to love presently, to take on no more than the work you are calling us to do, and to entrust what is burdening us to you.