Breathing Room for the Weary Activist

A community organizer in Portland spent three years fighting for affordable housing — showing up at city council meetings, knocking on doors, writing op-eds. She was good at it. But somewhere between the zoning hearings and the fundraising emails, she stopped sleeping. Her jaw cached permanently. She snapped at her partner. She forgot why she started.

A spiritual director finally asked her, "When was the last time you brought your anxiety to God instead of just to your to-do list?"

She didn't have an answer.

Paul writes to the Philippians from a prison cell — hardly a place of privilege or comfort — and says, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God." This isn't a call to passivity. It's an invitation to lay down the crushing fiction that the world's healing depends entirely on us.