I was reading news about the recent Russian Prisoner exchange. Alexei Navalny was a critic of the Ukraine war and died in a Siberian prison on February 16. He wrote letters from prison to Natan Sharansky, a Russian dissident who spent 9 years in a Siberian gulag in the 70’s. A reporter reached out to Sharansky about the recent release of several Russian prisoners. Below is a quote from Sharansky in that article.

“When I was in prison I was very optimistic. Not about myself, but about our struggle and our ultimate victory over that evil system. But about yourself, you can never be sure. And you try not to live with this dangerous hope because if you are only in hope, you can be broken very easily.

Navalny was very optimistic about the future, but he was sober about himself. When you are in this situation, you cannot think about your release but you can think about the ultimate victory—the defeat of evil.” 

Natan Sharansky

I thought about how this kind of mentality could apply to working for the Kingdom of God. When we work to bring about Kingdom of God results in this age, we can be very optimistic about the ultimate fulfillment of the Kingdom of God, but should we be as optimistic about our particular project? Perhaps we too can never be sure about the success of our kingdom of God endeavor. And if we put too much hope in that success, we can be broken of our commitment to working for the Kingdom.

I also think about how this applies perfectly to John the Baptist. When John sends his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”, Jesus points to his miraculous ministry to claim that he is the one. So John can have hope that Jesus has brought the Kingdom of God into the world. However, that did not mean that John could be optimistic about his future because he will be killed by Herod. John can celebrate the inauguration of the Kingdom of God and the eventual fulfillment of the Kingdom of God, but he cannot celebrate how that will impact his immediate future.

It is common to hear speakers encouraging people to dream big as far as what they can accomplish for God in their work. As I have shared before, I balk at these encouragements because I feel like they are too optimistic about what will actually be accomplished. Sharansky shares that “Navalny was very optimistic about the future, but he was sober about himself.” I like the idea of being very optimistic about the future Kingdom of God, but sober about what we are able to accomplish in our endeavors. What would this kind of optimism and sober mindedness look like with your work projects?

I would love to connect with you about these posts if they have stirred any thoughts or questions. Take a minute, shoot me an email at bo@leavenedlives.org, and let’s see where that takes us.