North Korea is making headlines this morning with the announcement that Kim Jong-un’s sister will attend the Opening Ceremonies of the Winter Olympics on Friday night. She will be the first immediate Kim family member to cross the border.

In other news, organizers are providing 110,000 condoms to athletes, a record number for a Winter Olympics.

Many articles have appeared in recent years chronicling the extreme sexual promiscuity of athletes during the Olympics. Every writer I’ve seen on the subject has found a way to make light of such sin or even to celebrate it.

Immorality and athletics do not have to go together, as several Philadelphia Eagles players proved Sunday evening when they used their Super Bowl victory to glorify God. It is tragic when Olympic athletes fail to use their platform for moral good. It is even more tragic that our culture doesn’t expect them to.

In other news, a fake doctor in India has made headlines for using contaminated needles and syringes, causing more than twenty people to test positive for HIV. Closer to home, dental students at Yale University made news for taking a selfie with two severed heads being used for medical research.

Unsurprisingly, given all the bad news in the news, more than half of Americans say the news causes them stress. Many report anxiety, fatigue, or sleep loss as a result. Psychologists warn that such stress can fuel physical ailments such as cardiovascular disease and rheumatoid arthritis.

Is there a positive way to respond to the negativity of our day?

“One reason sin flourishes”

Genesis 36 contains a genealogy of Esau, whose descendants became known as the Edomites. I count twenty-eight names on the list. The narrative then shifts to the “sons of Seir the Horite” (v. 20), the original inhabitants of the region where Esau’s descendants settled.

God’s eternal word lists the descendants of Esau despite the fact that they would oppose the Israelites on their way to the Holy…