One day, my dad was driving me home from Irish dance class. It must have been a Wednesday because NPR’s All Sides with Anne Fischer was playing. We were probably in the old, got-it-for-free Nissan XTerra as opposed to the hand-me-down 2004 Chevy Suburban because my dad always liked the red car better. I was in sixth grade, a newly minted middle schooler, and I was eager to change the world.

Consistent with my professor-of-a-father’s idea of post-dance talk, tonight’s discussion was about coral bleaching. At that point in my life, I thought I understood the extent of climate change’s ever-reaching, problem-multiplying tendencies. But as my dad told me more, a slow chill crept down my back that had nothing to do with the dried sweat coating my “Mid-America Oireachtas 2014” t-shirt. It felt like something had gripped my heart and was squeezing it like a boa constrictor does to a mouse.

When I got home that night, I could think of nothing else but the picture on my dad’s phone screen; ghostly claws like grave markers in a calcium carbonate cemetery underneath the waves.

It is hard not to spiral down a road of despair when one does not want to live in ignorance. Just like my fixation on the impending doom of coralbleaching, I have also found it hard not to think about the apocalypse.

I have dreamed multiple times about all the different versions: A meteor, environmental catastrophe, nuclear war, something akin to The Handmaid’s Tale. It is a challenge to go about our lives and not worry–to balance the uncertainty of what comes next with the certainty of our salvation in Christ.

It is hard to live in the promise of the Kingdom of God when it feels like nothing we can ever do will right the wrongs of the world.

And, it is hard not to feel guilty for feeling at peace while the Earth demands restitution from an unrepentant population.

How, then, do we go on? What is the secret to balancing engagement in the world, and the assurance we have in Christ? How do we reconcile our desire for control and the very real problems we face, with the faith that there is a far bigger plan beyond any of our comprehensions? For it would be worse for us to live in manufactured ignorance padded by our disproportional faith in the institutional Church rather than in the Lord Himself.

That night, after crying over the fate of the ocean, I stared at the ceiling of my bedroom, stewing in the heavy silence that always follows tears. Never had I felt so helpless. Never had I felt so angry. I wanted to hit something, or someone.

I instead decided to write a letter. I’ll admit, I did not expect a response and the White House never gave me one, despite signing it “Sincerely” and making sure to only insult the president once. However, this minor act gave me the energy to get up the next morning and compel my classmates to write letters, too. And I realized that I was stumbling upon something far greater than just a balm for my concern.

As we sit in our dorm rooms, or in chapel, or in class, how do we act on our convictions? Furthermore, and perhaps this should happen first, what are our convictions? What do we want to leave behind?

Again, I do not have answers. Besides, I don’t think you want that from me.

But we’re talking about life to the full, not existential questions like how we’re going to change the world. My proposition, therefore, is rooted in this notion of a life fulfilled by Christ–a life satisfied by Jesus in its entirety. Our great commandment is to love God and our neighbors, so instead of living in crippling fear of the future, we might strive for complete fulfillment in Jesus and His great love that catches all despair. A life that embraces this frees us from whatever burdens we may carry; worry, hopelessness, apathy, even ignorance, giving way to a path that is not easy, but satisfies us in ways that coffee shops, or even Trader Joe’s, never will.

I would argue that this solution is impossible in the same way that perfect sanctification and realization of the Kingdom of God cannot happen without the return of Jesus. Christianity has many of these already-not-yet ideas, so this may not be new to you. But, you want concrete answers, not more bumper-sticker slogans.

So what does living to the full look like? My thoughts turn to the environment, as they so often do, and I picture a people who love their neighbors enough to sacrifice their convenience, perhaps comfort at times, for the sake of children they will never meet. I see a people who do not brush aside pollution in favor of saying that Jesus will be back one day and make it all better. If that is your argument, then I ask you what of war? What of famine and poverty? What of injustice? These things will all be made better when Jesus comes back, and yet we pledge thousands to non-profits and missionaries to heal these wounds. Not that these are poorly intended, but as the Jordan dries up, and the wet season brings catastrophic floods, we pay to fix the damage, but are slower to react to the root of the problem, leaving a growing population vulnerable to the climate crisis.

I read a book recently about soil, but its goal was not to just talk about salinization or erosion as if preaching to a vacuum. Underneath the graphs and long passages, the author traced a story of humanity’s overindulgence in natural resources. It asked the question that if we awoke to our surroundings, if we truly awoke to the people and places around us, could that perhaps foster a constructive humility towards nature? An attitude driven by the perfect love given to us by God and shared amongst His creation.

How could we not love something that God declares good? His Kingdom has not yet come, but perhaps we might begin to see glimpses of it in our own backyards. The redwing blackbird once again graces the Gordon woods, a morning dove coos and reminds me of childhood, and unseen from the trees come the sounds of spring peepers, hundreds of tiny voices raised in unison against the backdrop of dusk.

Find the not-yet in the already here, and find it within you to protect it, for it is there, in stillness and in lowliness, where we learn to live, and love again.