A Place To Rest

When my daughter started secondary school this autumn and came home talking about all the different subjects, I was surprised when she mentioned she wasn’t doing any geography and history.

It turned out that these subjects had been amalgamated into something called ‘Social Studies’ and my daughter didn’t seem very impressed. I wasn’t exactly sure what social studies was, but assumed it was something about life and people and I was wondering why my daughter seemed negative about it. ‘’What are you learning?’‘ I asked, and she handed me her textbook open on a double page. There in front of my eyes were all the world’s problems. From poverty to environmental crises to drought and war, it was all there laid out with pictures to match.

Staring at that page I wondered how it might feel to a young person, relatively new to the world, to see it all summarized here; that the world is in pretty bad shape.

It got me thinking about the message children seem to be receiving today; that their purpose is to save the world.

Don’t get me wrong, the world needs help, and it is important that children who grow up in privilege should understand that not everyone is as lucky as them. However, being the mum of a sensitive child I’ve thought carefully about what I share and when, and for what purpose.

As all parents do, I want to raise a compassionate, caring daughter but I know if the information is too heavy then it’s too much to bear in one go and can result in the opposite; people turning away rather than lending a hand.

Do I want to raise a child who will ‘save the world?’

These days I’m not so sure.

One day earlier this year I met a few friends online to pray together. One of my friends read out a passage from the Bible where Jesus says, ‘’Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.’’

After hearing those words I couldn’t help

reflecting on the burdens I’d been carrying, the burden that it was my role to fix, to solve the mess that humanity is in. I realised after coming to Jesus, that I’d been trying to take on too much. I had been trying to ‘save the world.’

It had been a pattern long before COVID to see an area where humanity was in a mess and to take it on myself to fix things, whether it was sharing more compassionate parenting practises, warning women about dangerous medical procedures, or, more recently that the media has been exaggerating and lying to us about so much.

What is wrong with trying to fix things and make the world the better place, you might think?

Well, when it comes from a misunderstanding about the battle we face and what’s really at stake.

As the Bible says,

‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.’

We can get angry at the politicians and the billionaires but the real issue lies beyond that.

To try and take on this battle is to attempt to lift a heavy burden that we cannot possibly carry.

Looking at the world and the fear and uncertainty of what it may become it’s no wonder that adults engage in some kind of magical thinking that we are powerful beyond our human capacity and will somehow figure it all out. If not with a environmental mission then spiritual ideas of ‘ascension’ that will magically bypass all of our man-made crises.

I told my daughter, not to take on the burden of the world, because it wasn’t her job. I told her that Jesus is coming back and he will do it.

I know this may sound flippant and like a fairy-tale, the idea of there being a saviour , so that we just need to sit around watching Netflix and eating plastic-wrapped junk food not caring about the earth, because someone else is going to figure it out for us. But that is not how I think of it.

It is about being careful with what we carry and only taking on what it is ours to carry.

I think we should absolutely do our best in our corner of the world to love our neighbour, to care for others and the earth, to try and make it a more equal place, to fix what is broken.

But to also understand that there is something beyond the physical. That this is ultimately a spiritual war and it isn’t going to be solved by recycling, or telling everyone we know about the New World Order. (Though I do still try to do these things, sometimes!)

To understand it as a spiritual war and that we do have a saviour. It’s not an excuse to be lazy and disrespectful of our planet, or allow billionaires to get away with murder, but it a reason to let go. To trust, to pray. To find truth and let go of deceptions that tell us we are more powerful than we are. To humble ourselves to know our limits, and above all, to rest.