Hi Ho Silver and Bring on the Adventure!

As a single person (actually, this probably isn’t limited to just single people, but that’s beside the point), I keep wishing that the “next step” would happen in my life. I keep thinking that whenever I finally get that next job, or that next relationship, or that next child, that next house, that next etc., then the adventure in my life can begin. I keep thinking that where I am at right now is just a place for waiting for that next-step-thank-you-God-it’s-finally-here adventure to get started. Then the following thought hit me this week: gosh what if I’m thirty before any of those things happen? What if I’m forty? Eighty? What if I wait years and years for adventure to start in my life and in the process, miss all the adventures that could be happening to me now?

We all do it, to a point. We all have watched a movie and wished that all of that adventure could happen to us. The movie I just watched was a Sam Elliott and Tom Selleck western (gosh I love those movies!), full of rushing horses, cleverly timed and placed explosions of dynamite, racing trains, kidnappings, long lost love, a strong willed woman and stubborn but ruggedly handsome men, surprise attacks on enemy camps, canyon hideouts, a desperate battle between good and evil – oh I’m sorry, am I getting carried away? I wish! I wish I was the one being swept off my feet and onto the back of wild, racing horse as I narrowly escape a cattle stampede – oops sorry! I did it again!

Then I look at my own life and of course, none of those adventures are happening to me. (sigh) Where’s my adventure? When does my adventure get to start???

Well, here’s a neat little passage I came across recently –

“Life is now a battle and a journey. This is the truest explanation for what is going on, the only way to rightly understand our experience. Life is not a game of striving and indulgence. It is not a long march of duty and obligation. Life is a desperate quest through dangerous country to a destination that is, beyond all our wildest hopes, indescribably good.”
-John Eldredge, The Journey of Desire

Wait a second – did that guy just tell me that my life is a battle and a journey? A desperate quest through dangerous country? Wild? Really? He must have me confused with someone else! That sounds far too adventurous to be describing me.

Or is it? This week I’m reading in 2 Corinthians and in 2 Corinthians 11, Paul is writing about his life and it starts making me look at my own completely differently. His life was much more physically dangerous and hard and uncomfortable than mine, don’t get me wrong, but bear with me – Paul says he has worked hard, to within an inch of his life, I interpret. Can you relate to that? I can. He says he’s been flogged and near death again and again – have you gone through the same hurtful trial and broken heart beyond hope of repair over and over? I have. He’s been beaten, stoned, left for dead – ever felt abandoned, alone, or attacked? I have. He’s been shipwrecked – ever been lost in life, stranded so far away from where you want to be that you don’t know how to get back? I have. He’s spent a night in the open sea – ever had to wonder or worry about how you were not only going to get through the next day, but wonder how you were even going to get to the next day? I have. He’s been in danger from rivers and bandits – ever felt carried away by a force you can’t stop? He’s been in danger from his countrymen – ever lost trust in a friend? – and strangers. He’s been in danger in the country and in the city – it didn’t make a bit of difference if he lived where there was supposedly a slower pace or a faster one, the result was the same. He’s “labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep” – oh good heavens can I relate to that! He’s known hunger and thirst – my college days come to mind, but this doesn’t have to be a literal hunger and thirst, as you well know. We hunger, even starve for things we can’t get a grocery store. He’s been cold – ever lived in a drafty apartment? Ever had to skip paying a gas bill? And he says that on top of all of that, “I face daily pressure of my concern for the churches.” On top of managing to stay alive day to day, we have additional worries, don’t we? Single parents worry about their kids, some of us worry about something at work, some of us worry about a neighbor or another family member. Some of us worry about how we’re going to meet somebody new. Paul says that once he even escaped harm by being lowered from a window in a basket. God’s provided me with a few proverbial windows to climb out of myself.

Geeze, the more I look at Paul’s life, the more I see quite a bit of adventure reflected in my own. Now the idea of my life being battle makes a little more sense. No, I’m not carrying a sword around and riding about on horseback, but I fight the battle to strengthen the minds and guide the souls of teenagers every day (don’t tell me I don’t do battle!!) I don’t necessarily hide out in canyons from a posse with a vengeance, but I certainly cross gaping canyons in my heart. Surprise attacks? I’ve been subject to a few of those and I’ve probably led quite a few myself. Dangerous country? I will press on! War between good and evil? I will fight for the good! “I will keep on doing what I am doing!” as Paul says. “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.” We demolish doubts. We take captive thoughts and make them obedient to Christ. God gives me his grace and shows his power through us. We stand ready. Good grief, with a life full of so much adventure, I’ve quite forgotten that I was waiting on someone to bring the adventure to me!

Four Wheel Drive

If you pay attention to vehicle ads on television, you know what the ultimate sign of freedom is. "Hey, anybody can get a car - something with four wheels - but not every car will take you where you want to go," they say. But if you really want to live your way, if you really want to go where no one else can go, if you really want freedom you need one thing: four wheel drive.

Four wheel drive can get you places alright. And it can get you stuck in a lot of places you shouldn't have been to in the first place.

There is a story in Numbers that really doesn't get a whole lot of attention, but it's got mine this week and if you think about it, it's got a lot to do with having four wheel drive and using it to make a series of not-so-great decisions, that land a guy in not-such-a-great place.

Numbers 21 lands us in a state of transition between two great leaders (Moses and Joshua) for the Israelites. The Israelites start approaching the territory of an opposing leader named Balak and he's not thrilled about the idea. So Balak sends for a diviner, Balaam (it's easy to get names confused here, so stick with me!), to come and curse the Israelites and thus thwart their advances in Balak's direction. Balaam, being a good Christian sort of fellow, though, says he won't do any such thing. Balak, in turn, offers Balaam quite a sum of money to make this cursing business worth Balaam's while.

And here's where I imagine Balaam's sense of four wheel drive coming in. He probably figures that "you know, here's this money that I need and all I've really got to do is ride along with these fellows and act like I might curse their enemies for them. That really doesn't require any particular act of evil on my part. It's not really compromising my faith," and as simple as that, Balaam takes the money and decides to join the evil posse. I mean, he's got four-wheel drive, he can drive through all that muck and mud and make it out ok, right?

God's got a different opinion.

God makes it clear to Balaam that he's not headed in the right direction. He tells him that he'd better just stay home and keep those four wheels in the garae where they belong.

Balaam saddles up his donkey anyway. God decides that if He's not going to get Balaam's attention, then He'll go after the donkey instead. God puts a fierce angel right in that donkey's way and she, by golly, stops. She's got four-hoof drive alright, but she knows a bad muddy road/fierce angel of death when she sees one and she puts on the brakes. When Balaam figures out what's going on, he probably realized that maybe this whole thing has gone far enough and it's time to turn and head back home.

But he doesn't.

God tells Balaam then, that if he's going to go bailing off down these roads with his almighty four wheel drive, then he'd better do exactly what God tells him to do.

Now isn't that interesting? God coulda struck Balaam down right then and there. Heaven knows Balaam has disobeyed orders multiple times now, is on his way to curse a blessed people, knows that God wants him to stop screwing up and he's going anyway! But God doesn't strike Balaam down. He lets Balaam go off muddin', but now Balaam's got a new job to do. God is about to let Balaam get stuck out there on the road with Balak, and now He's going to get some use out of this predicament.

As the story goes on, Balaam finally gets to Balak and sees what Balak is really up to. Curse the Israelites? Are you kidding? That's serious! Now I imagine Balaam wondering what the heck he's gotten himself into. As Balak drags Balaam to go look at that pesky Israelite army that's assembling itself, Balaam probably realizes that he's just gotten to the end result of a series of sorry decisions. Oh no, he hasn't killed anybody, he hasn't committed any mortal sin, but he knows he's taken a whole lot of steps that he shouldn't have made. But now he's here and he looks at Balak and says "Well, I have come to you now." Now I've done it, he's thinking. Nothing to do but resign and accept my fate. Or is there? Now it's come down to the very moment where Balak is waiting for Balaam to utter those words that will end the Israelites. Oh, the pressure on those four wheels now!

Then Balaam remembers something: "But can I say just anything? I must speak only what God puts in my mouth." Over the course of the next several days, Balak keeps taking Balaam to places that will show him how important it is to stop the Israelites' progress and Balaam continues to bless them instead. With each effort that Balak makes to change Balaam's mind, Balaam becomes more and more resolute in what he must do, now that he's gotten himself here. Balaam, in the end, blesses the Israelites, strengthening them, and in the process, revealing to Balak how powerful God really is.

This story strikes me as important from several directions. Sometimes I feel like I've been blessed with a four wheel drive that gets me through and to all kinds of challenging places that people said I couldn't reach and then when I get there, I'm disheartened that no one else has made it there with me. Balaam's story makes me think that God knows exactly where I am and how I got there and he's going to use my location in this remote place to do some good. Maybe He's going to get me away to a remote place so I'll hear something He has to say. Maybe He's going to get me to a remote place so that I can reveal Him to people who are already there ahead of me by the way I make future decisions.

From a different perspective, sometimes I feel like I've made one choice after another to do things my own way, and not necessarily for the good. I barrel off down these muddy roads simply to show that no one can stop me and then I finally look up and realize that my four wheel drive has gotten me a long ways off from where I might ought to be. It's easy to look at life and think that there's no going back now, no way to undo what's been done and no way to get past it. In this story, God is telling us that just isn't so. He's telling us that yes, we've wound up somewhere he tried to tell us not to go to or yes, we've had the strength to get to some place that not many other people can - and yes, now we're stuck. But - God can use our predicaments, whether it's ourselves or Him that put us there.

We've all got a little bit of four-wheel drive in us that can get us stuck in some pretty remote places. Maybe it's time to stop spinning our tires and listen to what God wants us to do now that we're here.

Same Kind of Different

I have just finished reading The Same Kind of Different As Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore. There are some amazing lessons to be learned from this book. It is the story of a homeless man and an upscale art dealer and the difference they made in each others lives.
They were brought together by the faith of the art dealers wife and her faithfulness to the voice of God.

After she lost her battle with cancer, the homeless man (Denver Moore) is talking about how he was scared to get close to people, because everyone he had ever cared about had died. He continues on to say that he was glad that he had broken his own rule and let her be part of his life and how glad that he was the she had stood up to him when he tried to push her away. He then talked about the most important lesson that he thought she had taught him. "Every man should have the courage to stand up and face the enemy, cause ever person that looks like a enemy on the outside ain't necessarily one on the inside. We all has more in common than we think. You stood up with courage and faced me when I was dangerous, and it changed my life. You loved me for who I was on the inside, the person God meant for me to be, the one that had just gotten lost for a while on some ugly roads in life."

What are the ugly roads in life that we travel down that keep us from being the people God wants us to be? What enemies must we find the courage to face in order to change the lives of others?

The Great Migration

“There is a time for everything, a season for every activity under heaven.”

-Ecclesiastes 3:1

I am always glad to see Fall. I love the cooler days and the cooler nights, the colors, the clear and starry night skies, and the excitement that change is coming. There are some changes that I feel more than others, though – all of the coming and going. I watch birds like Scissortails and Kites stop their aerial acrobatics and head toward warmer pastures. Monarch butterflies start arriving in dogged ones and twos, and finally crowds, all flying wearily south in mystifying migration patterns that I wonder if they are even aware they are a part of. Hawks migrate through, and crows fill their places. Even people that have held dear places in my heart are “migrating” away, and new relationships will be migrating in. All of this migrating, this coming and going, makes a person start to wonder about the big-picture purpose for all of this moving around.

All of this coming and going also makes me marvel at how God sets the stage for the things He is about to do in our lives. Everything God does fits into an incredible plan that includes the most minute details. So as I watch leaves falling from trees and monarchs floating in and out of the falling leaves, I think to myself that it must be exciting to be a part of something so big, so grand, so timeless. Something that has been going on for thousands of years. Then the inevitable question becomes “Where and what is my place in all of this?” What is my purpose?

You and I are not the only ones to ask that question, and this brings me to what I think is my favorite part of the entire Bible. It’s not something that is often quoted in sermons and it’s not anything you see kids memorizing in Sunday school. In fact, it’s probably skimmed over a lot because of how unexciting it looks on the surface. I’m talking about Luke 3:23. It’s a list of Jesus’ ancestors. And it’s long. It takes us all the way back to Adam, in fact. In one person’s name is the representation of God’s favorite creation, the fall of man, and God’s plan to bring his favorite creation back to Him. God had the most grandest, most incredible plan of all time, and He was patiently waiting for the right people to get it set into motion. The list of ancestors advances, generations of men coming and going, from Adam to Noah to Abram. God chooses Abram to begin a journey that would begin a chain of events, as He instructs Abraham to move to Canaan and become the father of nations. Was Abraham going to see the final product of all of his labor? Was he going to see Jesus come and save all souls? Did he even know what God was going to do or how he was going to do it? Well, not exactly. But if Abraham hadn’t fulfilled his purpose, God’s plan would have been dropped to a dead halt. The list of names unfolds further before my eyes– Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Boaz, David, Joshua. And the list doesn’t just represent the men who fathered the next generation of people in each successive step in God’s plan. The list represents countless women (like Esther who found herself in a king’s court with the purpose of saving the Jews, and therefore David’s bloodline), countless children (like Moses’ big sister who played a role in preserving his life as an infant), countless sinners (anybody remember Jacob stealing his brother’s blessing and birthrights?), countless underdogs (Joseph, who was sold as a slave, came to lead Israelites into Egypt, setting the stage for Moses to show God’s strength by delivering them from Egypt), and – you knew I was going to say it – single people (like the two midwives who refused to kill all of the Hebrew baby boys, also preserving the bloodline to Jesus). The list even represents generations of people who didn’t make it to the list. What they all have in common is that every single one of them had a purpose and that was to get Jesus here. Some of them carried his blood, some of them protected the people who would carry his blood, some of them developed the laws that needed to be in place before Jesus could fulfill his purpose, some got people where they needed to be before the next step in God’s plan could happen. Some had to carry people through dark times so that God could use the next generation like a spotlight. There are over 70 generations of people recorded in that list and I love it because I can see God’s big picture, I can see the wheels turning, I see that if any one of those people hadn’t filled their purpose, however great or small, that it would have had the most drastic and terrible impact on me, thousands and thousands of years later.

There is a season for everything, alright. Like those monarchs, God has a purpose for me. He has a purpose for all of us, coming and going, moving and staying in place, planting and harvesting, tearing down and building, crying and laughing, embracing and turning away, being quiet and speaking up – God has a purpose for all of us. We are all part of a great migration – souls flying upward to Heaven – and we’re to bring everyone with us that we can.