Changing the World (Kind of)

An encouragement to exhausted do-gooders.

Photo by Simran Sood on Unsplash

It’s easy to get discouraged. Trust me, I read the same “news of the dumpster-fire” you do.

And it gets even more discouraging when you’re not just watching the chaos, but actively trying to do something about it. Whether you’re working in racial healing, recovery, immigration, adoption, or walking alongside the poor and vulnerable, it can feel like pushing a boulder uphill in flip-flops during a thunderstorm.

So if that’s you, I have some deeply encouraging news:

Your efforts may not amount to much. Yay!

I know. Not the pep talk you were expecting. But stay with me here folks...

Here’s the deal: Christians have a worldview that says the world is broken. Fallen. Off-kilter. And sometimes things get worse before they get better. Sometimes, they don’t get better at all, at least not in our lifetimes. Sometimes, we give everything we’ve got and the needle barely twitches.

And while this is difficult to come to grips with sometimes, it also saves us from getting too frustrated when our vision of utopia doesn’t come to pass.

So does that mean our efforts don’t matter?

Absolutely not.

Because our worldview doesn’t stop at fallenness. It includes a Redeemer. A Savior who sees, who cares, who empowers, and who is already at work even when we can’t see it.

I once heard a parable (which has almost turned cliché at this point) about a guy walking along a beach littered with starfish. He starts tossing them back into the sea, one by one. His friend says, “Why bother? You’ll never make a difference.” And the guy shrugs and says, “Made a difference to that one.”

We don’t always get to see the macro impact. The systems we’re working against of racism, poverty, addiction, power, and apathy are huge and complex. We should still challenge them. Still fight to reform them. Still work for justice. But we can also name the reality: it’s hard. And progress on the grand-scale level is often slow. Even generational.

Even so, we can still chip away at the edges. We can still make dents in injustice and callousness. Because each act of mercy, each push for fairness, each refusal to give in to despair, is in itself an inbreaking of the Kingdom of God.

You might not usher in the full reign of God’s Kingdom on earth (take a breath – that’s not your job anyway), but you can bring pieces of it into someone’s day; into a neighbor’s crisis; a stranger’s housing journey; a patient’s healing; a student’s future.

In these small, sacred points in time the Kingdom breaks in and we get to live in it for a moment, seeing just a flash of what will one day be when God makes all things new.

I understand that being told “you might never see the fruit of your work” can sound deeply depressing. But weirdly, I find it freeing. It takes the unbearable pressure off. Because changing the world isn’t on my shoulders or yours. It’s on God’s.

And that’s good news because while we plant seeds, we trust God with the results.

So I get it. Sometimes we’re going to feel like that silly starfish story is all we’ve got. But keep going. Keep showing up. Keep doing the quiet, holy, often thankless work. Usher in those Kingdom moments. God sees. God is moving. And one day, God will renew all things.

Maybe not today. Maybe not even in our lifetimes.

But “on earth as it is in heaven” still starts here.