Holiday reading, and the attendant choices that accompany it, is an art I have never quite mastered. My wife does periodically remind me of how on one holiday, early in our married life, I arrived poolside carrying my flip-flops, my sunglasses, and Jonathan Bardon’s 928-page magnus opus ‘A History of Ulster’.

Last year we headed off on a family holiday early in July. The day we travelled was the day of the UK General Election. In a parallel universe I sometimes have boyish imaginings of myself as a psephologist. Elections have always fascinated me: the data, the projections, the analysis, the human drama of it all. Over the next few days, I found myself dipping in and out of news and media websites, all the time assuring myself that such ‘down-time’ was all part of the holiday experience.

Sometimes I can be a slow learner. As that week unfolded, I began to discover something that I have discovered before. Submerging yourself in news, of whatever kind, draws you into a narrative world that at the same time distances you from the actual world, and the actual people who are in front of you.

Determined to learn from last year I made a quiet resolution as we prepared to go on holiday this year. No news. No social media. No heavy books (either in weight or in content). I do not want to make exaggerated claims for my short and individualised experiment, but I can honestly say that our holiday felt different this year. I felt more present, more relaxed, more engaged – more on holiday.

In a 1963 article in Time magazine the renowned theologian Karl Barth made a comment which has been paraphrased to encourage thoughtful Christians to live life with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other.

My quandary however when processing this image is that I find it, in practice, difficult to live with my mind in two places at once. So relentless is the flow of modern news that on any given day my mind becomes quickly immersed in what I have just heard, read, or clicked on. So, the story of the day, or the story of the moment, be that a war, a political drama, or a football transfer, becomes my story, my inhabited narrative space.

It is interesting to reflect upon Barth’s actual quote in his Time article. His counsel to those seeking to follow in the way of Christ was: ‘Take your Bible and take your newspaper and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.’

The picture is of a person of faith engaged with the world (in all its broken complexity) but living with an a priori attentiveness to what God has revealed in His written word.

As I adapt back into the rhythms of post-holiday world, I find myself searching for models and mentors of what this nuanced attentiveness to both world and word might look like in daily practice.

Last week I came across an envelope when tidying my study. It contained a small clutch of neatly folded A5 sermon notes. Dating from the early 2000s these belonged to the late Dr Brian Moore. At this time Brian, now in retirement, and close to the end of active ministry, used to get me to type up his PowerPoint slides.

These notes were Brian’s handwritten headings for a sermon on Nahum. Describing Nahum’s world as ‘a word of injustice, violence, cruelty and evil’ he noted how in the midst of such realities ‘Nahum affirmed his faith in God – A God who daringly uses evil to fulfil His purpose.’

Then this line caught my eye: ‘In the story of Nahum we are not observers but participants.’

Brian had a remarkable ministry behind him. Called to Albert Street in 1965, and retiring from what had become West Kirk on the Shankill in 2001, Brian’s ministry was a front-line ministry, in West Belfast, throughout the entire duration of the Troubles. An assiduous and sensitive pastor, a passionate preacher, a fervent evangelist, Brian was also, to borrow from Gladys Ganiel, one of Belfast’s “quiet peace makers.”

Scripture encourages God’s people to remember leaders who have gone ahead, to ‘consider the outcome of their way of life’ ‘and to ‘imitate their faith.’

What was it that fuelled Brian, and others like him, to persevere in faith in the worst of times and in the toughest of places? What was it that enabled him to live with eyes and ears open to trauma, suffering, evil, and injustice, when the news of any day could have quenched faith and extinguished hope or imagination?

Re-reading those sermon notes I hear the voice of a man who believed that God’s great story of salvation was the story that he had been invited to participate in. He listened to the news, he engaged with all that his newspapers spoke of, but it was God’s cross-centred story, which gripped him.

The world, and the daily news cycle, has come a long way since a day in April 1930 when those tuning in to the BBC evening bulletin were advised ‘Today there is no news.’

In a world where each new day guarantees much news, people of persevering faith do well to root their hearts and minds, and to find daily refreshment, perspective, and hope in the story that by faith we participate in. God’s revealed story of how in every time and generation, through His Son and by His Spirit, He is in the long, but unstoppable process, of making everything new (Revelation 21:5).

Niall Lockhart is minister in Ballyhenry Presbyterian Church.

Please note that the statements and views expressed in this article of those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Contemporary Christianity.