When It Feels Too Big

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

-Lao Tzu

Love your neighbour as yourself.

-Jesus

On Thursday Canada has our first National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. Our national history in relation to indigenous people and communities has not been good and it remains strained at best. Much has been written and still needs to be said, in our search for a healthy and restorative way forward.

And this is only one of many areas of struggle, pain, and division in our world where healing is needed. I feel as though every day I'm reminded of another space and place of struggle. Truthfully, it can be completely overwhelming. Whether it be a National Day of Truth and Reconciliation or any one of the other areas that clamour for us to acknowledge the brokenness of our world and calls on us to fly their flag (both literally and metaphorically), how can and should we respond when we often tired and barely holding on ourselves? I don't have a definitive answer to that, but let me suggest a few things that may be helpful.

1. Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. When a difficult issue is brought up the tendency in our world is to try to force people to take sides. There is pressure to either add our voice beside theirs or we need to push back and provide an alternative perspective. When speaking up, in either direction, there comes with it an expectation to defend one's perspective. It takes only moments on Twitter to see how this rapidly devolves into dehumanization and anger. There is an "us vs them" polarity that seems a requirement for any kind of contemporary engagement. The way of Jesus invites us into a different way that rejects that polarity and invites people around a common table where we listen to each other with the goal of learning and building bridges, not speaking to defend and defeat.
2. Love your neighbour. There are hundreds of commands in the Old Testament. There are commands about how to deal with sin in the community of faith, how to keep oneself spiritually pure, and how to engage in the worship of Yahweh. But when Jesus was asked about what was most important he said it boils down to two things: Love God, love your neighbour. Are there systemic issues in our world? Yes. Are they so big that it can be hard to know where to even start? Yes. Jesus' suggestion seems to be that the big issues begin to get solved in the simplest manner. Love your neighbour. If we're following Jesus, we don't have the freedom of ignoring the struggles of the world impacting men and women and children who are image-bearers of God. We can't just bury our heads in the sand even when it is overwhelming. But neither do we have the responsibility to fix them all by ourself or ourselves. What can I do, I can love my neighbour. (For more about who our neighbour is see Luke 10:29-37.)
3. Acknowledge limits. There are limits to everyone and everything. Organizations (political ones, educational ones, social ones, and even religious ones) are limited in the scope of how they can respond to wrongs in the world. Individuals are likewise limited in their capacity to engage with the challenges of our day. One of the challenges of how things get talked about is the impression that everyone must be involved in fixing this big and so broken world we live in. On one hand, this is true. As followers of Jesus, we all do play a role in bringing the shalom of Jesus to bear in this world. But that doesn't mean we can respond to every issue. Listening and acknowledging someone's pain is not the same as owning that pain and carrying it ourselves. And just because a specific issue resonates deeply with me (perhaps because I'm personally impacted) doesn't mean that it must resonate just as deeply with everyone else. As long as I'm willing to listen and learning to practice love for my neighbour, acknowledging my limitations doesn't mean I don't care or am somehow a terrible person. When someone else is limited in their capacity to do anything more than listen does not mean they don't care or are opposed to us. They may just be at their limit. When there is so much and it is so big we need to have compassion and patience with each other and ourselves.
4. Embrace the presence of Christ. I have found this is helpful when I come face to face with my limitations. First, when I lack the capacity to respond to a heartbreaking reality the way I wish I could or feel I should, I find comfort in knowing the Christ is present within that reality when I cannot be. The old hymn says, "Everywhere that man can be, thou God are present there." Sometimes all I can do is embrace the truth that God is present in the midst of the mess and pray that others will know it. The Second aspect to embracing the presence of Christ is in relation to my own feelings of being overwhelmed. So often, the struggle is just too big to bear. The pressure to join "us" or "them" is overwhelming. The labels others assign us (or we think they assign us) because of what we say or don't say are exhausting. The very acts of loving our neighbour leave us vulnerable and can be costly and we don't know if we can keep on doing it. In those moments, days, or lengthy periods of being stretched to (or beyond) our limits, we need to embrace the presence of Christ and find in him enough for today. And then the next day. And then the day after that.

There's an old query, "How do you eat an elephant?" The answer is, "One bite at a time." As we move towards the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, the struggles feel like an elephant. I can't eat the whole thing. But I work to listen well and love my neighbour. I can acknowledge my limits, and those of others, without guilt or resentment. And I can hold on to Jesus who is the author of peace, in my life and, through me, in the world. That's a bite I can take and manage.

Through that, I can participate in both Truth and Reconciliation work even when most of it is so, so beyond me.