Know Your Limits
Loving the People in Front of You Requires Knowing Your Limits
One of the hardest truths for people who see clearly right now is this
we do not have the emotional or spiritual capacity to carry the whole world.
Our phones and feeds tell us otherwise. They train us to believe that faithfulness means having an opinion on everything, responding to everyone, and staying constantly informed. But the human nervous system simply was not designed for that level of exposure to suffering, conflict, fear, and outrage.
Constant exposure does not make us more faithful.
It usually makes us more anxious, reactive, and brittle.
There is a reason Jesus did not start with a movement, a platform, or a media strategy.
He started with twelve people.
Not because the world was small.
But because love has to be small enough to be embodied.
Embracing the Smallness of Faithfulness
One of the most powerful films I have seen in recent years is A Hidden Life. Even the title feels like a quiet rebuke to our obsession with scale, visibility, and impact.
Faithfulness rarely looks loud.
It does not go viral.
It often happens in obscurity, in one conversation, in one relationship, in one costly choice no one applauds.
Maybe right now you do not have the capacity to engage everyone.
But you do have the capacity to stay present with one person. Someone you love, trust, and disagree with deeply.
That may be the only place God is asking you to show up.
Why Constant Exposure Is Spiritually Dangerous
When we are constantly plugged into news and social media, several things happen inside us.
Our anxiety increases.
Our compassion narrows.
Our nervous system stays activated.
Our capacity for curiosity collapses.
You cannot love people well when your body thinks it is under threat all day.
This is not avoidance.
This is wisdom.
Jesus regularly withdrew. Not because he did not care, but because he did. Withdrawal was not disengagement. It was how he stayed rooted enough to return in love.
Faithfulness today may look smaller than we hoped.
But smaller does not mean weaker.
Sometimes the most powerful resistance is simply a life lived slowly, rooted deeply, and offered faithfully to the people right in front of us.
I’m releasing 3 more posts over the next 10 days or so that are all closely tied together. Upcoming…
#1 Fear, Control, and the Shared Ground Beneath Our Divisions: If we want to understand why our culture feels so fractured right now, we have to look beneath arguments and positions and ask a deeper question.
#2 The Cross as the Line We Forgot to Cross: The cross is not just about where we go someday. It is about what we are willing to face now.
#3 Engaging White Christian Nationalism Without Losing Your Soul: Reading Scripture Through Power or Through Jesus (A Study and Gentle Critique)