A World That Feels Worn Out
Living in the Twin Cities puts me close to a lot of the madness unfolding right now. It has many of us exhausted and asking the same question:
What are we supposed to do about all this?
There is anger and confusion, of course. But beneath it, what I hear most is exhaustion. We are tired. Disoriented. As if something familiar has finally snapped and we don’t quite know what it means or where it’s taking us.
The exhaustion I sense in all of us isn’t something that just started. And it’s bigger than whatever is happening in this country at the moment.
I think what many of us are feeling right now is not a sudden breakdown, but the accumulated weight of a world that has been stretched too far for too long—without rest, without repair, and without honest reckoning.
At some level we know it, and we run from it like it will kill us, when ironically the running is what’s doing the killing.
Often the body feels this long before the mind can grasp it.
A Long History of Unrest
In the American story alone, the strain is easy to trace if we’re willing to look. A Civil War that ended without true reconciliation. Bitterness, grief, rage, injustice—all balled up with nowhere to go. And when pain has nowhere to go, it doesn’t disappear. It looks for a target. We reach for scapegoats. We assign blame. We hurt each other. The Black community has borne more than its share of that burden.
Reconstruction abandoned. Racial terror buried under mythology. An industrial economy that learned how to turn human bodies and time into commodities. World wars layered onto economic collapse. Cold War fear normalized. Vietnam never integrated. Cultural revolutions, too many, too quickly. No time to adapt. No time to process. No time to grieve.
Then came acceleration.
Twenty-four-hour news cycles. Endless crisis. Digital outrage. Algorithms designed to keep our nervous systems activated and our attention fragmented. No real pause. No shared exhale. No collective Sabbath. We are being driven, and it often feels like no one, least of all us, is actually in control.
But this pattern isn’t unique to America.
The Biblical Echo
Human history, and even the biblical story, tell the same tale. Scripture reads less like a record of spiritual triumph and more like a long account of people who could not stop long enough to heal. Enslavement followed by wilderness panic. Kings rising and falling. People turning against each other. Exile after exile. Prophets pleading for rest, repentance, and return, mostly ignored.
Even the Ten Commandments contain a warning we’ve consistently treated as optional:
“Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy… for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth… but rested the seventh day.”
— Exodus 20:8, 11
Not as a spiritual luxury, but as a survival practice. God was saying this is how I made you. It’s pretty much a requirement if you want to stay safe and sane.
And I can’t help wondering: is the “consequence” of ignoring that commandment something God does to us, or something we do to ourselves? When we refuse rest, do we get punished? Or do we simply live with the natural cost of a life that never lets go?
Systems without rest do not produce wisdom.
They perpetuate trauma.
Living in the Smoke
So when we see numbing, hyper-reactivity, withdrawal, cynicism, despair, and rage, we should be careful not to rush to moral judgment. These are not signs that people have suddenly become weaker or worse.
They are signs that we are human and too often wounded and in need of help.
We didn’t start the fire.
But we are living in the smoke.
That matters, because shame distorts diagnosis. If we believe the problem is simply that people today are failing and that the only responses available to us are blame, outrage, or control, then none of those things heal anything. They only perpetuate the cycle. We keep playing the same game. All of us.
But if the exhaustion we’re feeling really is the result of centuries of unresolved grief, unprocessed violence, and systems that never learned how to rest, then a different kind of response deserves consideration.
Not faster action.
Not louder certainty.
Not more control.
Maybe deeper honesty.
Maybe some form of surrender.
What Comes Next
I’m going to take a few reflections to sit with this, not because I think I have answers, but because I’m increasingly convinced that whatever healing is possible will not come from reacting to the surface of things. It will come from understanding the deeper fire that’s been burning beneath our history, our politics, and in our bodies.
In the next piece, I want to look more closely at why our instinct, in moments like this, is almost always to reach for control and what Jesus did with that instinct. How he seemed to consistently refuse the path of more control, even when it seemed like the faithful thing to do.
You know the old question:
Why don’t you, God, do something about this?
Maybe God already did.
Maybe we just aren’t listening very well.
For now, I want to leave this here with the possibility that the exhaustion so many of us feel is not a personal failure or a civic one. It may be a signal. An invitation. An ancient warning we’ve ignored too many times before.
And until we’re willing to listen to that, no amount of urgency will save us from repeating the same patterns, only faster, and at growing cost.
A brief note to readers
This reflection is the first in a series of posts in which I’m working through questions of exhaustion, control, and what genuine healing might require, personally, theologically, and collectively. I’m not offering conclusions. I’m trying to speak truth as carefully and honestly as I know how.
Reflection
Where in your own life, body, relationships, work, or faith, do you sense exhaustion as a signal asking for honesty, rest, or release?
“Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain… It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives sleep to his beloved.”
--Psalm 127:1–2
God of breath and mercy,
we confess how tired we are and how often we mistake urgency for faithfulness.
Teach us to listen to what our bodies and our souls are trying to tell us.
Give us courage to loosen our grip, wisdom to rest, and grace to trust that the world does not depend on our constant striving.
Amen
The Elephant Chronicles are meditations based on my upcoming book “The Lie that Kills Us: We All Have Elephants.” It explores the elephants we avoid: denial, addiction, trauma, death, and grace.
If you’d like me to let you know when it’s released, send a note to: Pastored@addictionandfaith.com
I’d be honored to keep you in the loop.
The book is now available here: Amazon
I enjoyed this message!! It’s crazy how in this moment I believe I’ve been just going and need that rest. I love how you put scripture and break it down. To where it just all makes sense!! Thank you for the message.
Having a Sabbath of some sort is so important. The mind and body need that disconnection in order to reconnect to our priorities.