April 28, 2025
I was supposed to run a Ragnar Relay this past weekend, something I’ve always wanted to do. These are the long-distance races that often cover enough ground could see the distance on a globe, from a coastal range peak to the ocean, for example. Two hundred+ miles.
Absent divine intervention, there is no way I could run to hundred miles. But in the race I was meant to take part in, I wouldn’t have had to do that. I had a 4.4 mile leg. Then a rest while others took turns, re-emerging hours later to crank out another few miles. Segment by segment, the whole race is run, all those miles covered—collectively.
These are times that feel like a two hundred+ mile race.
You don’t need an authoritarian leader or mass chaos to see the world is not as it should be. A song in our church’s repertoire asks, call and response style, “Do you feel the world is broken?” The response is a resounding, “We do!”
But for many of us, the current moment feels existential. This zeitgeist was perfectly captured by this month’s Atlantic magazine cover. I saw it last week while at jury duty, when the stately woman next to me pulled it from her tote, a beautiful, hefty imprint that made a solid slap on the table when set down. I didn’t know at first what I was seeing in the abstract art but the image suddenly coalesced into place, an American flag careening apart, stars tumbling down, with the chilling words “It’s later than you think.” An article from that issue appeared in my news feed the next day with another sobering image, America as an hourglass, dripping down. There’s a “ticking clock on American freedom,” it warned—a crisis about the very heart of our democracy and rule of law that it’s almost, but not quite, too late to avert.
Whether you’re driven to help avoid the looming threat of an authoritarian constitutional crisis or simply aching with the hurt of neighbors, you naturally ask, what do I do?
Yet the question can be paralyzing. The moment you become awake to a problem of any magnitude—the very kind worthy of your attention and effort—you may likewise begin to feel a sense of your own relative powerlessness.
Articles like this Atlantic piece seek to combat helplessness by stocking the larder with action steps—but even the list of action steps can overwhelm, becoming auto-pilot additions to the mental load. I flutter about like a magpie, gathering odd tidbits on what that might look like in practice from the Atlantic or We Choose Welcome or my neighborhood mom’s chat, trying to construct a coherent nest to hold my desire to be a person resisting destruction, creating goodness, living generously and bravely. I stack on suggestions like I stack books by my favorite chair, a pretty picture of possibility that’s impossible to implement, a hundred mile+ race I cannot run.
Cannot run alone, that is.
I routinely forget that all that needs doing it not mine to do.
When I reflected on the north star of loving one’s neighbor recently in Sojourners, there wasn’t space to expand an insight that has helped me tremendously in grappling with what that actually entails. In his book You’re Only Human, Kelly Kapic reflects on our God-given creaturely limits, reminding me of two critical realities. First, what I am meant to do is limited to who and where I am and what I’m called to—by design. Second, my race is not a solo endeavor, but part of a relay.
We do not serve and love as isolated individuals, but as the Church, a united body:
“No one person can be or do everything. But together, as the whole body of Christ, even in this broken world we can recall each other and our neighbors to patterns of life that harmonize rather than conflict with the way God made us.
“I am caring for prisoners in jail; I am evangelizing the disenfranchised in Nepal; I am praying over the sick child in the hospital; I am serving the recovering victims of sex trafficking; I am standing against racial injustice; I am caring for the widows. And I am doing so much more. How? I am doing all of this because I am part of the living body of Christ. God’s Spirit has united me to Christ, and because of that union, to my sisters and brothers of the faith. We are one.
“I am not the Messiah. And neither are you. Nor is your pastor. But together—resting in the finished work of Christ and empowered by the Spirit—together we carry out the Father’s compassion and love by participating in his holy work.”
To persevere in the hard work of resisting evil and cultivating good, it is crucial to know these two things: what you are called to, and that you’re not alone.
What does that mean for what to actually do, in these times where it is late, but not too late?
I can’t answer for you, but I can offer some guesses:
- Are you anxious and unsure of your role? Perhaps your first step is not frantic activity but open-handed discernment. Notice where you are naturally drawn, what is energizing and what feels like a burden. Ask God for guidance: what is mine to carry?
- Are you disconnected, overwhelmed by headlines and just wanting to live your life? Perhaps your move is drawing near to the heart of God, asking God to cultivate in you a love for those God loves.
- Have you been resisting for a long time, seeking justice and goodness in the world’s brokenness? Maybe resistance is rest, letting someone else run a leg while you recover.
In almost any scenario, there is a work of paying attention—noticing what surfaces, noticing our own reaction, where we resist, and asking with God if that resistance is a sign to back off, or a sign to dig deeper toward an interior issue it is seeking to mask. All of that needs sufficient space and quiet to let the nuggets of truth surface from the noise—which is to say, whatever other action you take, one critical one is probably taking time to be with God in silence.
Sometimes indecision about what to do—at least for me, if I’m honest—comes from an insidious fear that my actions aren’t cool enough. I resist a small act of goodness because it’s small or hidden; I can’t see how it will make the kind of impact I long for. I know it’s messed up, even if conflating our yearning for good and selfish desires is a normal human response.
In these moments, a voice of wisdom sometimes whispers in my mind, Anna in Frozen 2 urging herself to do “the next right thing.” Girl has a point. Taking the small known step has a way of unlocking the next step. God’s word is a lamp unto our feet, often lighting up one stepping stone at a time—a surprisingly helpful middle school youth group trope that’s stayed with me.
Consider it an experiment:
What happens if you spend a week attempting to pay attention to the still small inner voice, gut instinct, God’s gentle nudges, looking for the rising urge to act out love in a tangible way, however small and hidden? What if you commit to respond to each small prompt right away, to the best of your ability? What if you keep asking God, what is mine? Not stressing about manufacturing answers but listening for invitations, and when they come, saying yes?
Join the relay race marked out for you. Commit to running your leg, and let others run theirs.
I’d love to hear what happens.
Sometimes, the invitation is to back down. I was trying to fit in this Ragnar Relay, held two hours away from my DC home crammed between a visit from my own sister and mom, a retreat I led Friday afternoon, and a Saturday morning family commitment. I knew it would be dicey but I didn’t want to give up the chance to invest in neighborhood community, or let the others down.
Until one of them gave me permission, reminding me this isn’t the only opportunity, and they would be fine without me. This isn’t my leg of the race, she reminded me. But being present to people I’ve made commitments to, including offering space for people to engage in the very discernment I’m writing about here—that is. It was right to say no to one thing so I could offer a full yes to something else.
Kapic quotes Scottish theologian John Baillie, in what I offer as a prayer for us as we engage in this experiment of discernment and obedience:
O Lord of the vineyard, I beg Thy blessing upon all who truly desire to serve Thee by being diligent and faithful in their several callings, bearing their due share of the world’s burden, and going about their daily tasks in all simplicity and uprightness of heart.
Amen.
