By Tessa Laing, Mission Partner in Uganda

Nick and Tessa live and work in their local com­munity in Gulu. Nick coordin­ates over 40 Anglican health centres as part of an ini­ti­at­ive to further extend health­care to the rural poor. Tessa works with com­munit­ies to tackle local justice issues and is cur­rently focused on helping rural cit­izens fight for their land rights.

When my neigh­bour handed me a twig and said, “Just stick it in the ground,” I was dubious. But a week later, I noticed tiny leaves unfurl­ing. Within a few months, we beheld a vibrant Hibis­cus bush, thriv­ing beyond my efforts. Uganda’s soil left me humbled and full of wonder.

That hibis­cus reminds me of Jesus’ parable of the Kingdom of God: a farmer scat­ters seeds, goes about life, and wakes one day to find a harvest (Mark 4:26–29). “All by itself,” the earth yields grain. The farmer doesn’t under­stand exactly how; she only knows it happens. It’s a beau­ti­ful image, but it also leaves me rest­less. Scat­ter­ing seeds and waiting doesn’t sound stra­tegic. If it’s really all up to God, what is our respons­ib­il­ity? And on the other hand, when the world feels so stomach-lurch­ingly far from the justice and equity of God’s kingdom, how do we trust that God is at work?

When I started this work, I acted as though we could build the Kingdom through sheer strategy and per­sever­ance. And some­times, it worked. I still remem­ber women tri­umphantly dancing as we watched local author­it­ies set fire to a moun­tain of con­fis­cated alcohol sachets. After years of work, we won our cam­paign for a dis­trict ban on cheap spirits sold in sachets—a law that was even­tu­ally adopted nationally.

But all too soon, our community group that had led the campaign scattered, and our wider faith network dissolved. I don’t doubt that God worked through the campaign. But in my rush to achieve, I was blind to the deeper, slower approach God might have been calling me to—more time building relationships, inspiring others with a Biblical vision of justice, and carving out broader space for God to act.

Over time, I’ve real­ised that God’s Kingdom doesn’t follow my logic; growth doesn’t always unfold on my timeline. In our peace-build­ing work to recon­cile Ma’di and Acholi com­munit­ies fight­ing over control of a vast land known as Apaa, we’ve encountered polit­ical inter­fer­ence, abrupt army inter­ven­tions, and power struggles within both ethnic groups. Last week, I sat with an Acholi leader who had pre­vi­ously embraced the peace process but now said, “You simply can’t trust them. The Ma’di are double-dealers. They’ll use this to take over our land.”

With so much beyond our control, I’m learn­ing to live in the tension between action and sur­render. I try to remem­ber three things:

We Are God’s Co-Workers

Paul writes in 1 Cor­inthi­ans 3:6–9: “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.” It’s a paradox—we are called to act, to play our part, yet the ulti­mate work belongs to God.

Our team has mapped the con­tours of con­flict, thought deeply, coached peace-build­ers, and ini­ti­ated new con­ver­sa­tions. Our next steps are bring­ing together a team from both sides, nur­tur­ing cross-ethnic rela­tion­ships, involving the church, and cre­at­ing plat­forms for dialogue.

Yet, the most meaningful breakthroughs—a hostile group agreeing to talk, a softening of hearts toward reconciliation—often come in ways we didn’t initially plan or foresee. We plan and act, but God brings the harvest.

The Kingdom is about Presence

I used to think the Kingdom was all about out­comes and visible results. I’ve come to see that it’s also about presence—about showing up and embody­ing God’s love in the ordinary.

In Apaa, it looks like sitting with a family whose home has been burned, sharing millet bread and greens ‘pasted’ with peanut butter, and listen­ing to their story. It looks like cel­eb­rat­ing small vic­tor­ies and mourn­ing set­backs. It might mean vis­it­ing the guy lan­guish­ing in an inhu­mane prison far from home, whether he was wrongly accused or got swept up in violent revenge. These acts don’t end con­flicts or produce meas­ur­able out­comes, but they matter. N.T. Wright writes, “Every act of love, grat­it­ude, and kind­ness… finds its way into the new cre­ation that God will one day make.” Small, faith­ful acts are part of God’s redempt­ive work, even when they don’t look like ‘success.’

It Takes Time

We often imagine social move­ments as sudden revolu­tions, but moments of change are built on years of unglam­or­ous drudgery. The U.S. civil rights move­ment wasn’t born in the marches of the 1960s but in decades of quiet organ­ising, notably among Black churches. The abol­i­tion of apartheid in South Africa was the fruit of gen­er­a­tions of struggle.

Such movements, as American activist and writer Rebecca Solnit mused, are like mushrooms that pop up seemingly spontaneously after rain, but were in fact connected to an unseen, subterranean network of nodules. The Kingdom of God works in similarly hidden ways. Jesus tells us it is like yeast working through dough or a mustard seed growing into a tree—slow, often invisible, but bringing about a deep transformation.

I try to hold on to this amid the unpre­dict­able terrain of Apaa and our incre­mental pro­gress. An Acholi woman recog­nised that the Ma’di had their own story to tell about the land. A Ma’di elder shifted from hos­til­ity to cau­tious curi­os­ity. These moments aren’t head­line-worthy, but they are seeds that we hope will slowly trans­form the con­flict in ways we can’t predict, as others come and play their part too.

Like my hibis­cus, the Kingdom grows in ways beyond our control. Our work matters, but in the end, it is God who brings the harvest.

This article was taken from our Annual Report 2025. Read here — God’s Unstop­pable Kingdom.