“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” —Matthew 6:10
Activism without surrender is noise without harmony. Only in kneeling to God’s will do we find the way to act rightly. —D.
+ + +
Activism is the restless child of a culture that cannot kneel. We rise with clenched fists and furrowed brows, driven to reshape the world as if its crooked lines could be straightened by human hands alone. We name problems, pin slogans to suffering, and charge forward with blueprints for healing things we barely understand. And always the cry is the same: We will save the world. But this is not hope, it’s hubris. It’s the voice of a heart untethered from the prayer that steadies all others: Thy will be done. It is rebellion dressed up as righteousness, forgetting that the world is not ours to remake. It was spoken into being by a Word more ancient than our fury.
In the West, we’ve been trained to see surrender as weakness, as a retreat from the urgent work of “justice.” But biblically, surrender is strength. It is the alignment of our lives with the One whose hands hold the stars, the seasons, and the hidden workings of mercy. The birds do not hold planning meetings. The lilies do not rally for reforms. Yet they are fed, clothed, kept. Not because they act, but because they are kept by a Father who sees them. So too we are called, not to mastery, but to stewardship. Not to the noise of fixing everything, but to the stillness that trusts the Maker who orders all things in time. The true soul of the obedient man says not, My plan come to pass, but Thy kingdom come.
And this surrender does not mean apathy. It means movement by the Spirit, not by pride. It means asking: Is this work God’s will, or my will disguised as virtue? Am I acting from love, or from the fear that if I don’t, no one will? God does not command frenzy. He commands faithfulness. We will not save the world. That role is already filled. But we may, by grace, bear witness to His saving. So let us kneel, not because we’ve given up, but because we’ve given in, at last, to the better will. To the will that shaped Eden. To the will that breaks bread with the broken. To the will that will not fail.
And in that posture, low to the ground, eyes lifted, we find the true beginning of peace.