On a recent evening, I wanted to take time to pray about some event in the news. This is something I’ve done for many years. I believe in the power of prayer – of turning to God for answers.
I tried to select a single subject for this time of devotion. There were so many possibilities. My review of humanity’s needs started to seem overwhelming, and before long I recognized that my thoughts had fallen into a pattern of doomsday scrolling.
Doomscrolling, as it’s more commonly known, refers to obsessively scrolling through social media or the news, expecting and sometimes seeking out information that makes us feel sad, anxious, angry, etc. Even though I was not looking at or reading the news at that moment, a review of the events of the day seemed like a horror film playing in my mind. In fact, I was mentally scrolling instead of turning to God!
While it’s important to stay up to date on the news, the need is first to establish our own peace of mind by affirming what’s spiritually true, and then we will be prepared to help the world by seeing how that applies to what is being reported and discussed.
The impulse to doomscroll can put us in the position of believing that chaos is inevitable. But a statement from “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, helps me conquer this feeling: “Your influence for good depends upon the weight you throw into the right scale” (p. 192). Intuitively, I knew that I needed to keep from being pulled into hopelessness. I mentally hit the brakes and decided that a different approach was needed.
Almost immediately, a calm, refreshing thought surfaced: What is God thinking? I started by pondering God’s supremacy and trusting that there were answers. God knows His creation only as He created it: perfect, spiritual, pure, and very good, according to the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible. This is the only reality, despite any appearance to the contrary. Anything suggesting that God, good, is not All is a false claim that God is not the only creator.
I knew that as I remembered what was absolutely true, answers would come into focus. I needed to acknowledge the allness of God and the forever presence of Christ, Truth. Jesus came to show us through his ministry how to heal, and Christ is the spiritual idea that he fully embodied. Science and Health defines the timeless Christ as “the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error” (p. 583).
The Apostle Paul reminded Christ’s followers of their firm grounding and safety in Truth when he wrote, “Neither death, nor life, … nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38, 39). Was Paul downplaying the troubles of Christ’s followers? Not at all; he was counseling them to turn to God in all of those troubles.
Paul also offers this encouraging counsel about how to turn to God: “Continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (II Timothy 3:14-15).
Our prayers for humanity are purified and bolstered by being firmly grounded in the Scriptures. The mental doomscrolling gave way to peace and an assurance that God would provide the needed wisdom to move us all forward.
This led me to recall another instance years ago of what, in hindsight, I’d call domestic doomscrolling. When I was going through a divorce, I found myself mentally replaying unhappy events. Through prayer, I realized that the reiteration of such events was not beneficial in any way and that I could choose to put God first in my thoughts. This prioritization brought me great freedom and gradual progress toward a naturally joy-filled life.
It can take dedicated prayer to avoid getting wrapped up in the mesmeric appearance of the reality and activity of evil and to sincerely stay with Truth in order to bring healing. But persistently working to improve at this practice is strengthening and transformative.
Adapted from an article published on sentinel.christianscience.com, Oct. 2, 2025.
