Last Tuesday, I arrived back to the United States from a trip to Israel and Egypt. It was great! Comments have returned from being moderated – so feel free to write what you think.
There were many things that made great impressions on me while we were traveling. One of them was my lack of knowledge of international news. Our tour guide in Egypt, made the comment that, in general, Americans tend to be uninformed about what is happening in the rest of the world. This comment put up my internal defenses, but as I thought about it, I realized that it was a valid assertion – at least for me. The next day, in another conversation, our guide asked who the prime minister of United Kingdom was. I did not know. This sealed the deal – I resolved to become more aware of what is happening in the rest of the globe.
When I arrived back to the US, I set my iGoogle home page to include the following news feeds:
- BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition
- CNN.com – World
- Al Jazeera English
- NPR Topics: News
- Top Stories – Google News
- washingtonpost.com – World
Hopefully, these will provide a broad scope of news. I’ll see what happens.
PS – I now know that Gordon Brown is the current prime minister of the United Kingdom.
Rev. Andrew Conard 
6 replies on “Israel, Egypt and International News”
welcome back. did you bring me anything 😉
oh- that website is:
http://universe.daylife.com/
Yeah, it seems that a lot of people don’t keep up with international news. I know I have been slacking on that lately (my answer to the PM question would have been, “Um, the person after Tony Blair?). Thanks for the reminder – I need to get back to reading more.
I’ve heard some people say that they don’t read or watch the news, including international news, because they think it’s too depressing…all about war, violence, famine, natural disasters, etc. They ask me why there isn’t more happy news (as if I can speak for all journalists or something). I get the impression that some people feel powerless to do anything to help when they read stories about that kind of stuff, so I guess that is depressing, but what’s the alternative? Something I’ve thought about quite a bit, but there doesn’t seem to be a simple answer.
deviantmonk – Thanks for the welcome. I did bring back some pictures that I could share. I’ll send you a link. and thanks for the website. That is pretty cool 🙂
Liz – Good point. There may not be a lot of encouraging news, perhaps because “good news” tends not to be newsworthy – well newsworthy in the sense that it sells. I think that it is important to be aware of what is happening in the world, because I believe that it can add to the picture of what God is doing in the world and / or the opportunities to be a part of God’s work in the world. I think that being aware is the first step toward taking action.
“I think that being aware is the first step toward taking action.”
I completely agree. Well put.
Thanks 🙂