To the Ones Running on Empty

A letter from under the broom tree

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons...

I have a confession: this was supposed to be a different letter.

Martin Luther King Day is today, and I sat down to write something about the Birmingham Jail, white moderates, and the fierce urgency of now. I was going to challenge the clergy who’ve stayed silent. You know, invoke the prophets, call the church to account, that sort of thing. Lord knows, I’ve written that “letter” before.

But when I sat down to write it this morning, it wouldn’t come.

What came instead was this:

I’m tired. I’ve been doing this work for a lot of years, and, frankly, it feels like I should have more to show for it.

Instead, I have exhaustion, a handful of relationships that survived, and a question I can’t stop asking: “What does faithfulness even look like when you’re running on empty?”

I don’t know. Maybe you’re asking that too.

After November 2024, something in me broke. Not entirely. I still preached, taught classes, and worried about the state of the world. But underneath the performance, the part of me that believed this work might actually bend the arc just ... stopped. Like a clock that finally wound down. I’ve been waiting for the ticking to start again. It hasn’t.

That’s not entirely true. I’ve started writing in earnest again, which has been a joy. But because I’m paying more attention, I’m also aware of how little I’m able to change.

I’ve preached about hope for decades. Told congregations that despair is a luxury we can’t afford, that the arc is long but bends toward justice, that resurrection is the shape of reality. All that stuff.

And I still believe those things. Mostly. But belief and energy aren’t the same thing. You can believe in the sunrise and still be too tired to get out of bed to see it.

I keep thinking about Sisyphus rolling that rock up the hill ... and that damn rock rolling right back down. Here’s what I keep thinking: Come on! I’ve rolled this rock before. After elections, after setbacks, after watching the church choose power over faithfulness again and again. Each time, I found something in me that could start me climbing.

But this time, I’m still sitting at the bottom, staring at the rock. My hands are raw, my back hurts, and I’m wondering if I’ve got it in me to roll it up the hill one more time.

The thing is, I’ve been working on this stuff since before “Christian nationalism” was a phrase I recognized.

I’ve written essays, preached sermons, marched in the streets, and had hard conversations that cost me friendships.

I’ve been that guy, the one who made it awkward, the one who said the thing everyone was thinking but didn’t want to say out loud, and especially not in public.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not telling you any of this to congratulate myself. I’m telling you because it didn’t work.

Or maybe it worked in ways I just can’t measure. Maybe somebody somewhere made a different choice because of something I wrote. I have to believe that’s possible.

But the big picture? The trajectory?

I’ve been swimming upstream against this current for years, and the current is currently winning.

In 2022, I even tried something different. I thought maybe the problem was that I’d been standing outside the system when what we needed were people on the inside. So I ran for the state legislature. Knocked on doors in the August heat and the January cold. Put my name on signs. Let myself hope that maybe this was the missing piece.

I lost.

I’d be lying if I said that loss didn’t crack something in me that hasn’t fully healed. I’d tried the sermons, the essays, the marches. And when none of that seemed enough, I put my actual body into the machinery of change, and the machinery spit me back out.

I’ve run out of strategies. And maybe the reason that stings is that I’ve spent all this time believing the right strategy would eventually work.

So when November 2024 happened, it wasn’t just one loss. It was another stone on a pile already too heavy to carry. For the first time in years, I didn’t have a next move. I ran out of strategies. I ran out of ways to try.

And now, I’m even older. The political campaign I ran took something out of me I haven’t gotten back. The thought of returning to the streets, rolling this rock up the hill again, finding yet another strategy after all the other ones seem to have failed ... some days it feels less like faithfulness and more like hitting myself in the head with a hammer.

I can’t tell you how much I feel like a hypocrite admitting that. The guy who’s been telling everybody else to show up, and now I’m the one who can’t get off the couch.

So if you’re wrung out right now, I’m the last person to shame you into action.

I’m not going to tell you to dig deeper, fight harder, remember what’s at stake. You know what’s at stake. That knowledge is part of what’s crushing your soul.

I don’t have a five-point plan for faithful resistance. All I’ve got is a broom tree and a question, and the faint hope that I’m not sitting under it by myself.

Here’s what I’d say to you that I’m having a hard time hearing myself. And I hope this isn’t just an elaborate effort at self-justification:

You’re allowed to be tired and admit you don’t know what comes next. You’re allowed to run out of fire without running out of faith. Those aren’t the same thing, even though, let’s be honest, they feel like it at 2 a.m. when you’re staring at the ceiling.

I keep coming back to Elijah. Remember him? He’d just won the showdown on Mount Carmel. Fire from heaven, dramatic victory, the whole scene of triumph.

But immediately afterward, he high-tailed it into the wilderness, collapsed under a broom tree, and asked God to let him die. “I’ve had enough, LORD.”

I used to read that as a cautionary tale. Now it feels like asking permission. Permission to be this tired. Permission to not know what comes next.

Because look at what God doesn’t do. God doesn’t lecture Elijah about “hanging tough.” Doesn’t remind him of the stakes. Doesn’t tell him to pull himself together.

God sends bread. And water. Then sleep. And more bread. And then, only after Elijah has been fed and rested, a gentle question: “What are you doing here?”

Later, God said the thing Elijah most needed to know: “I have reserved seven thousand in Israel who have not bowed the knee.” In other words, you’re not the only one doing this work.

You’re not alone. You don’t have to carry this by yourself. And maybe your next first step right now isn’t another march or another campaign. Maybe it’s letting yourself be fed.

Here’s my dilemma: What does faithfulness look like when you’re running on empty? Not even the heroic kind. Just regular, garden-variety faithfulness. The kind you can sustain when you’re not sure it’s making any difference.

The truth of it is, I’ve spent a long time thinking that faithfulness meant showing up with fire. Speaking truth to power. Being the big mouth that wouldn’t let people look away. Don’t get me wrong: I still think that matters.

But I’m starting to wonder if faithfulness has rooms I haven’t explored because I was too busy believing the barricades are the only faithful place to stand.

Maybe faithfulness now looks like telling the truth from the pulpit, even when we’re tired. Even when it’s just one honest sentence slipped into a sermon we barely had the energy to write.

Maybe it looks like tending the people right in front of us. The ones who are scared themselves, wondering if God has abandoned them. We can’t save the democracy by the weekend. But we can sit with someone whose world is falling apart.

Maybe it looks like the quiet refusal to pretend this is normal. A raised eyebrow. A gentle correction. A refusal to let the conversation move on as if nothing important’s at stake.

Maybe it looks like rest. Sabbath. Staying alive and sane so we’re still here in five years when the world needs us.

I don’t know if that’s enough. But I’m starting to think it might be what I’ve got at the moment.

As we say in the mountains, here’s the part I’ve been studying: I realize I can’t do this by myself. I need to know who else is under the broom tree, companions for this next part of the road.

So I’m asking. Not from strength, but from the low place where I actually am: Who else is here?

Who else is trying to figure out what faithfulness looks like when the playbook isn’t working?

Maybe that’s you. Maybe you’ve been waiting for permission to admit you’re running on fumes. Consider this permission, if you need it. You’re not a failure. You’re a human being who’s been carrying too much grief and anger for too long. That’s not a character flaw; it’s simple physics.

Or maybe you’ve got more fire than I do right now. (God, please let this be the case.) Maybe you’re one of the seven thousand who haven’t bowed the knee. If that’s you, go. Please. We need your energy. Don’t wait for me to catch my breath.

And if you’ve been silent all this time ... I’m too tired for a lecture. So, I’ll just say: The world could use you now. It’s late. But it’s not too late. There’s still room for your hands on this rock.

I want to be honest about what I still have in the tank.

I still believe the Jesus I met in Sunday school is real. The one who stands with the crushed, confronts the powerful, and keeps showing up in the last place the empire thinks to look. That belief is quieter now, but it’s still there. Glowing like an ember under ash.

I still believe telling the truth matters, even when it doesn’t seem to change anything. Maybe especially then.

And I’m still writing. I sat down this morning, not sure I had anything left, and here we are. The ember isn’t a bonfire. But it hasn’t gone out.

Dr. King wrote from a jail cell, exhausted, uncertain whether any of it would work. He kept writing anyway. I’m trying to do the same, even if all I have right now is this.

So here’s my blessing for the ones under the broom tree:

May we receive the bread and water and rest we need before anyone asks us to walk another mile.

May we find the seven thousand, or even just seven, who haven’t given up and can carry what we can’t right now.

May our exhaustion be an honest offering, not a shame to hide.

May the ember be enough.

And may we know, somewhere deeper than our tiredness can reach, that the God who feeds depleted prophets in the wilderness isn’t finished with us yet.

I wish I had more. But that’s the best I can come up with right now.

Be gentle with yourself. And be brave when you can.

Derek