I recently contributed several pieces to the annual devotional series "Mornings with Jesus" published by Guideposts Corporation. The format for the pieces is that they start with a Bible verse, then there's a short story or application, ending with a faith step. The theme this year is God's faithfulness. My job was to write entries that would help the reader see God's faithfulness in daily life.

As often happens, it was a good exercise for me to go through as I wrote those devotions with the theme on my mind while looking for signs of faithfulness of God. It was challenging sometimes to juxtapose such a theme with what I see happening in the world. I am trying to continue the discipline even after meeting my writing deadline.

This morning I started the day, as I always do, by taking Stella to school. We talked about where to go to an Easter Sunday service, as we both desire spiritual practice in a community but can't find a place we belong in our town. After I dropped her off, I listened to NPR and the live Supreme Court hearing on birthright citizenship. There was also an update on the war in Iran, talk of leaving NATO, and discussion of gas prices. A farmer was interviewed about how he is struggling to stay afloat.

Back home, I previewed the 2025 movie "Nuremberg" for a section of Comp 2 I am teaching on the literature of war in which Russell Crowe plays Hermann Goring, Hitler's second in command. It is based on the true story of Goring's interaction with Army psychiatrist Lt. Col. Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) before the high-ranking Nazi sinks into despair and dies by suicide after his role in the Nuremberg trials. The movie turns on the psychiatrist's recognition of the evil humankind is capable of.

It is hard, like everything I've read or seen about the Holocaust, for the heart and mind to process.

After writing a viewer's guide to the movie, the day's schedule dictated that I needed to turn my thoughts toward Easter, family time, menus, and filling my kids' baskets. It was a strange shift. How does one do that? How do we all not end up like the doctor who came face to face with evil, when we, too, must face its existence, not only in our history, but in our every day?

For me the answer lies in Easter. And the faith that while evil is real and powerful, love is more real and more powerful. Love is stronger. Love wins.

My grandpa's favorite Bible verse used to be Romans 12:21: "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." Committing it to memory, for which I was paid $1 as a child, keeps paying me dividends. It reminds me: The way we shift from the despair of all the bad stuff we see in the world is not to ignore it or deny it, but to be a part of the overcoming of it, by doing good.

Like Kristin Foster, who developed the online registration tool for Get Loud Arkansas that enables people to register online to vote in our state. And beloved Sen. Joyce Elliott, who started Get Loud. And decent judges like Timothy Brooks and those in the conservative Eighth Circuit who stand up for our civil rights.

Do good like Emily Waldorf, the brave Arkansan who tells the story of her miscarriage in hopes of saving other women's lives. Like Stacey McAdoo, who turns the pain of losing her son into passion for helping others through loss. Like Adam Watson, who started Gravel & Grit to fight the unwanted prison in Franklin County. Like Colt Shelby, a regular hard-working citizen, whose disgust with the same prison project mobilized him to take on the governor as an independent candidate in the fall.

Do good, as Theodore Roosevelt said, quoting Squire Bill Widener, by doing what you can with what you have where you are. That includes being good to yourself. Happy Easter!

Gwen Ford Faulkenberry is an author, teacher, and award-winning columnist from Ozark. Email her at gfaulkenberry@hotmail.com. Watch her vodcast here: https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/podcast/smalltowngirl/, https://www.nwaonline.com/news/podcast/smalltowngirl/.

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