Hangin with the neighbor

I have this neighbor. He really is a remarkable guy. He will do anything to help us out. If we need something, he'll lend it, pick it up at the store, tell you where to get it cheap, or make one for you. He's just that kind of neighbor. And his wife is even worse. She tells me today they need a favor - she is making sweet potato/pecan pie and she's afraid there will be to much for the two of them to eat alone, so she says we could help her by eating it with them. I know - tough job, but someone has to do it. It will be quite the act of service, but we'll manage. Maybe they have some ice cream they are having trouble with too......

I don't know exactly what it means to love your neighbor. I know as Christians we are supposed to do it. And truth be told, Les and Nancy are better at it than any Christian who ever lived. And they aren't Christians. What does that say about the rest of us? Do we really have an excuse? All I know is that when I am around them I am humbled by their selfless acts of love. More than their acts is their attitudes. They are never inconvenienced to help out. They never say no when you need a hand. They would literally give you the shirt off their back. I know that phrase is way over used, but these folks really would do it.

Maybe its time for us followers of Jesus to live like we are following. Maybe we need to be the neighbors loving better than other folks - not because we are Christians, and that is what Christians are supposed to do, but because we are God's kids in love with His creation.

Lonliness and Connection - being the Body

There have been two topics making themselves known frequently in my life. They are both in an area of growth that I see necessary in the body of Christ. The first is loneliness. It's funny (not really very funny) how many people will share that at the very core of their being they feel profoundly lonely. They don't sense anyone in their corner, or any person that really sits with them there. The other area that I see needing attention is the opposite of that - connection. People are deeply longing for real and authentic connection with another human being. On one side connection, on the other a deep loss of connection.

I wonder why it is that we are supposed to be a family, and yet we are so divided. Maybe the answer is in the question - that we are not good at being family because we are so divided. I have to be honest - I am really tired of that. There is no excuse in the whole world for the state of the church. We have misdefined it as a place to go. We have misdefined it as an event to do. We have created a monster from what Jesus left us. I am ashamed by what we have become.

And yet there is always that remnant of hope. There are always a few who haven't gotten caught up in the machinery and the entertainment, and really love Jesus. There are some who don't really get distracted by the bright, shiny objects that contemporary Christianity dangles out there, but who passionately and simply just want to walk in relationship with God. Now how do we bridge the gap? How do people who are lonely find the people who are connecting?

I am thinking that it needs to be the other way around - that those in connection need to look for the lonely and be their friend. I think maybe we ought to bag stewardship campaigns and mission campaigns and offering for the food pantry, and just do this one thing. I think that if people were to get in and get their hands dirty serving and connecting with another human being - and that's all we did - we wouldn't have need of all those other things.

What could you do today to connect with another human? What simple step could you enter into that might make the real body of Christ happen? How could you be Jesus today?

Double Drivin

The last couple days I have been driving to Denver and back. Actually, I have been driving to Denver and back two different times. It is a little over 5 hours one way, so that means I will have been on the road almost 22 hours when I get back home. With that much time on my hands, it has been interesting to find things to keep myself occupied. Of course with the massive brain power I wield, a Red Bull and a cigar serve to entertain me for hours.

Actually, it has been good being on the road. It has given me space to move into something new with Papa. I found myself entering territory previously unventured into, and liking the larger size of the space I was discovering. Being captive in a car with only Him forced me in some ways to draw close. It has been good.

I suppose I should have some big revelations having been cooped up with God for that long. But as I walk this journey I find that God isn't really about the big events as much as He is about the journey - the walking together through whatever comes down the tube. These last couple days we have traveled into some places I hadn't anticipated - imagine that! I see Him leading me into resurrecting some dreams that I thought had gotten lost in the tidal wave that consumed me a few years back. But He is bringing them back to light, and holding them before me, and I find myself deeply humbled and greatly hopeful again. It is good to be alive.

It strikes me that it is just like Papa to turn this great adventure in ways I didn't see coming. He is so very creative. And He is showing me for the hundredth time that He is still writing the story of my life. I think back to all the fatalistic views I have held of life and the hopelessness that has so many times overwhelmed me, and I see myself with such little faith. But I am convinced that He doesn't really care about my faith. It doesn't keep Him from being everything He wants to be in my life. I feel like a paint brush (okay, one without many bristles on his top side) that is being used to paint a picture that I can't see yet - one that is more beautiful than I could ever imagine. And it's a painting with His thumb prints all over it. I'm so glad Papa is a messy painter, and people can see His marks all over the picture.

Praise be to the God who is, who was, and who ever will be!

Starting fires

My favorite theme verse for years has been the St. Irenaeus quote "The Glory of God is a man fully alive". I still love it. I hunger more deeply than anything else to help ignite an unquenchable fire in the hearts of the people I work with. Christianity is way too full of boring Christians who obey the rules, but do little to start fires.

Everything that matters is stored in our hearts. It is the center of the fire that burns inside, and it is from that heart that we learn to live authentically and passionately. It never surprises me when people talk about their struggles. I think struggles become a clever distraction from really living the adventure of faith. We struggle with sin or self or purpose rather than stepping boldly into the future taking a necessarily tight hold of Papa's hand, daring to trust that He IS, that He leads, and that we are not powerful enough to completely screw our lives up if we are walking with Him.

For many years I guess I bought into the whole 'Its about living a righteous life' thing. Now I find myself irresistibly drawn to starting fires - igniting the tinder of all that I believe God calls us to be. I don't think living righteous is ever an appropriate goal. Jesus needs to be our goal - knowing Him , walking with Him, daring to trust Him, learning to know His voice and His leading. If we focus on Jesus, righteous living follows. But it doesn't work the other way around. Pursuing being righteous doesn't get us Jesus. The fire has to be about Him, not us.

I love a quote from Ray Bradbury's book Fahrenheit 451. I will modify it here to make a point.
"I hate a Roman named Status Quo. Stuff your eyes with the wonder of Jesus, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world, walk with Jesus every step in that adventure. The journey is more fantastic than all the good works could ever buy. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that - shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass."

We need to live our faith that way - radical and ready to go wherever He might take us, more interested in being alive than we are in being right or secure or accepted. We need to light a fire that ignites others to the way of Jesus. We need to live unquenchable lives that seek Jesus at all costs, even if that cost is making mistakes or being wrong or being totally consumed in the process. There is simply no excuse for boring Christianity!

The Sin of Judgment

When I boil the gospel down to the bare bones of what it means to be a Christian, it comes down to one thing - love. God is love, and we are called to love. There, that should be simple enough. The fact that we suck at doing it is another simple fact. I ask folks what the opposite of love is, and most say it is hate. The direct opposite of loving my neighbor is hating my neighbor. I guess that is pretty simple to. But I think it is off. There might be a few situations where I might hate someone, but it isn't where I struggle. And generally it isn't where I see the people in my world struggling either. I think that the opposite of love is judgment. It is far worse than hating.

At a deeper level, I find that the place we are the most judgmental is towards ourselves. Many Christians have an attitude that being transformed into the image of Christ means that we have to change all of who we are into all of who He is. I wonder sometimes if we might get farther by focusing on just loving ourselves rather than trying to change ourselves. If I remember right, the great command has at it's very root, the foundation of loving ourselves. If I love myself, then I can love my neighbor. If I can love my neighbor, then I love God. I have heard many preachers teach the opposite of this - that there is something very wrong with loving ourselves. They teach that we are wicked and deceitful and capable of nothing good. I believe the opposite - that we are bought with a price and have a new heart in Christ, and that there is profound good in us. Too much wrong teaching has many of us convinced that if we are ever to be loved by God, we had better stop being us and become someone very different.

I am really tired of the sin of judgment. If there were one thing in the body of Christ I would eliminate, it would be that. It is bad enough that we tend to judge each other. But it is a wholly different thing when we do it to ourselves. We decide that something about ourselves is wrong or unlovely or damnable is some way. Rather than being Jesus to ourselves, we critique and condemn and reject (just like Jesus did, right?). When Jesus said that the same measure we use to measure to others will be used to measure us, I think this was what He was talking about. We judge others because we judge ourselves. Psychologists have known this for years - why is the body of Christ so far behind? Love your neighbor as yourself. This ain't rocket science here.

I'd like to talk about a different way. What if we were to believe that we belong to God and that He is working in us? I we could buy that, we could next buy into the thought that His working in us can be trusted - we could begin to trust that every movement inside is somehow affected by the Spirit of God living there. That doesn't mean that we wouldn't make mistakes - it would mean that we could trust His working in us, despite the mistakes. I mean, let's be honest - either the Spirit of God is in us as believers, or He isn't. If He is, then we can know Him and trust Him and rest in the fact that He is alive in there.

If we could really trust that He is working, then our journey would be about learning to trust Him rather than trying to fix us. It could become about Him, and not about us. What a novel idea.

Splitting Firewood

My friends Mark and Carol have been visiting us this last week. They have both been such a blessing to have visit. Mark made the foolish statement that he wanted to help out around the place. Its been like having my own personal slave having a guy friend around. We split firewood that was left on the property when we moved in. It was such fun that we drove the big, ugly 4x4 truck up into the national forest, plunging through ruts deeper than my kid's heads, knocking over bushes and sinking deep into mud puddles the size of lake Michigan, to get to some standing dead trees. It was quite an adventure.

We finally found an 80 ft. ponderosa pine that had 'Cut me down' written all over it. I fired up the chainsaw and began cutting. After a few minutes we both ran cowering far away as it came crashing down. So to answer the age old question 'If a tree falls in the forest, is it still the male gender's fault?' the answer is 'yes!'

We took turns cutting the monster up into pieces neither one of us could carry, which forced us to have to work together - a deeply humbling prospect for guys. Truth be told, when we walked out of the woods, several miracles happened. Mark was ten years younger and his hair wasn't white any more, and I had rippling muscles and all my hair back. Something about working a chainsaw that long can really do wonders for the male ego. We actually stood taller, even if only in our own minds.

I realized the next morning two very important things - the first was the sudden, embarrassing realization that I'm not 25 any more, (translated that means I hurt like hell the next day), and secondly, there is something deeply fulfilling about doing some hard physical labor with a good friend. I hate to admit it, but Mark is almost ten years older than I am, and he kicked my butt out there in the lumberjack world. When we got home, he wanted to split it all. I took the initiative to have him evaluated for mental illness.

I often think about Jesus the Messiah, or Jesus the healer, or Jesus the Lord. But it doesn't cross my mind much that Jesus was a carpenter far more years than He was a savior. He knew hard work. He knew lifting timbers and carving wood. He knew sweat on his brow and deep grit embedded in his hands. Interesting to note that the very tools of His trade for thirty years also became the instruments that were used to kill him.

I am thankful that the 80 ft. ponderosa didn't kill us. And I am ever grateful to have a Lord who understands hard work and has walked every step of this life before me. And I am especially blessed to get to hang in the words with a good friend and a really great savior.

Frost in the Morning

It has been frosting lately. This being our first year in Colorado has left us not knowing what the seasons would be like. For the last week we have been scraping frost off the windshield of the car. We find ourselves waking up to darkness and frost and cold and quickly questioning the choice to move here. I'm not sure what we expected. Frost happens almost everywhere. But it still takes me by surprise - I guess I thought it would always be sunny and 70 degrees. The thing that is different about the weather here is a profound concept that I am trying to get used to. It won't sound like much when I write it, but here it goes - the weather changes.

In Colorado, the temperature can fluctuate as much as 60 degrees in a given day. This morning is was in the high 20's. This afternoon it could be in the 80's. The day before yesterday it was rainy and snowing in the mountains, with sleet and hail. Yesterday is was beautiful and sunny and warm and the snow was melting off. You never know what to expect. But living in an area that has 300+ days of sunshine leaves a pretty good chance that you'll see the warm glow of yellow stuff sooner or later.

I have a point to all this, and it isn't to just talk about the weather. I find that life can be a little like the weather in Colorado. When we encounter a cold, frosty, dark morning, it sure feels like it will never be 70 and sunny. I remind myself every morning that it will be warm later, but the same thinking happens every time. I find that most of us think like that as we follow God. When things are cold and frosty and dark, we lose sight of the sunshine to come. We buy into the lie that life will always be like this. Yet the reality couldn't be farther from that. The reality, the truth, is that God is all about growing and changing. That is the very reason He came to earth - to help us grow into His likeness. He doesn't even think about us staying the same. He is about life!

So I guess we need to remind ourselves that the cold and dark in life won't last. And when the sunshine comes, we can rejoice in a deep appreciation of it because it is set in the backdrop of dark and cold. It is the contradiction that makes it beautiful. It is the dark and cold that accentuates the sunshine and warmth.

How often have we wanted to trade in the murky days for the sunny ones? Yet something profoundly important would be lost - appreciation and perspective. Out of the darkness, God created light. What a contrast. Out of mud He created man. What a contrast. And out of the mess that we make of our own lives, Papa makes more beauty than we could ever have imagined.

Making Bread

Last summer we took the leap and bought a new machine for our family. I guess for most people that would be referring to a new car or something. For us, it was the faith walk into the purchase of a bread machine. It was almost $4 for this thing! We aren't really the 'fancy machine' kinda people, but I have to admit I bought a $3 juicer as well last summer. Whoever invented garage sales will always be my hero.

I have never seen making bread as a manly job. Sorry to genderize it. When I think about making bread, images of a fat gramma lady working the dough come up. I see her with a bandanna around her head holder her hair back and her wearing an apron, with flour dust all over her. She looks like aunt Jemima from the syrup bottle. Okay, okay, so I admit I am little weird. My point is that when I think of making bread, I usually don't think of a middle aged, balding man in the mountains of Colorado doing it.

But the last few days I've been trying to make a loaf or two every day - we eat a lot of bread. Sometimes they turn out really good. Other times the cat runs out of the kitchen really fast and hides under the bed. He's a weird cat. More often than not, the family appreciates what I make, and even when it is a little sub-par, they eat it happily. It's a weird family.

It's funny that the term 'making bread' is also used to describe the process of going to work and bringing home a pay check. That kind of making bread is easier for me to see a man doing. Sorry to genderize the situation again. That's my intention or my point. My point is this; making bread in either fashion, is a part of necessity on earth. Part of our purpose during this life is to provide for ourselves by making bread or making bread. Some think that if they go make bread, they are thwarting God's plans for their lives. Some think that if they make bread, they are doing all that God created them to do. Others launch out into the world and never think about what God might want, and wonder why their making bread isn't cutting it. It is also funny that Jesus quoted the verse to Satan that man cannot live by bread alone. I wonder what He meant.

Here's the 'Mike' version. If all our lives are about what we do and what we accomplish and about how much we get - the amount of bread we make- we are really missing the point of life. If bread is all we have, we can't live. That means my work, my possessions, my amassed wealth will never provide life for me. I guess that means the new bread machine isn't going to ultimately make much truly satisfying bread. Bummer - $4 wasted!

The other thing that the Mike version thinks is that bread ain't gonna cut it because we were made for more than bread. What I mean is that we will never be truly satisfied with the things that are here, that are now. The ache inside is for Someone far more important - namely, the Bread of Life. It is the Divine plan that we hunger for bread. But the hunger is designed to lead us to Him, not to a collection of 'things'. Its a dichotomy (I know, its a fancy word that I don't understand either). I think that means that it is both (and completely neither) at the same time.
The dichotomy is that we must make bread to live, AND that bread will never satisfy because we were made for more than bread.

All I know is that today there is the smell of baking delight wafting from the kitchen, and the cat isn't running away, so there is a good chance we might have a good batch. And I guess I also know that the Bread of Life is also wafting all around me. I know that if I miss The Bread because of the bread, I will also miss the very reason I was created. After all, doesn't it say that as often as I eat of The Bread, I eat of Life?

So today, and tomorrow, and the next day I pray that I be given my daily bread in extra slices.

Writing Life

I realized today that I tend to write better when I am blogging - when you put a blank piece of paper in front of me, I don't know what to say. It's like I know that writing on my blog might actually get read by someone. It makes me put on my best (I know, it's hard to believe this is my best). I find myself writing BECAUSE someone is reading.

I guess thinking that someone might read this (thank you to the two people who do regularly) makes me think harder. It holds me accountable to actually making some sense. I notice that there is something at stake when I write and think there might be somebody reading. Somehow the writing matters more if there is an audience.

There is such an obvious translation to real life here. Imagine if we lived our lives like I write - adjusting what you say and how you say it just a little, kinda out of respect for the person who might be reading - because they matter to you.

So here is the closest to profound I am going to get in this blog. I actually made it up myself, so please be at least a little impressed;

"Write your life as if someone was reading it"

Maybe this whole thing is a game in my head and I am the only one that reads my blogs. Even if that is so, I know God reads. I know that He reads and watches and loves what I do. He doesn't really care about the misspellings in my life, or the dangling sentences. He doesn't care when I begin a sentence with a forbidden 'and' or 'but'. He just delights in my being His kid. Its like the thousands of pictures of trucks and airplanes that the boys draw for Laura and me. There is always a new one on the fridge - and it doesn't really matter if it is any good or not. They are our kids. That's all that matters.

So write the story of your life as if the whole world would see, and when they see, may it be Jesus that shines through your life.

Adventure

I don't belief life has to be boring. But most people I talk to think it does. They tell me "I have to do a bunch of things that I don't want to do - how can I be anything but bored?" I guess I believe that there is always a choice about whether I want to live life as an adventure, or as a long death march.

Lately I find myself really into meeting people. I will start up conversations with the waitress, the guy out parking cars, the kid bagging my groceries, the telemarketer calling at 8:00 at night (Ok, I don't really talk to telemarketers, but I admit I like hanging up on them). I have been exploring just what potential I have to connect with people. I have always known I have this knack of being able to talk to folks, but it crossed my mind the other day that I could choose to be intentional about it and find out just how much influence I could have in the world. The experiment has been uncanny.

I am discovering that there are two truths surfacing in this adventure. The first is that if I am authentically interested in a person, they really want to be known most of the time. People love to have someone actually want to know them. And people will tell me the most intimate stuff when I just take the time to actually (and honestly) want to know them. It is the coolest thing.



The second thing I am discovering is that I was designed to do this. What I mean by that is there seems to be some innate thing inside of me that was intended to care for and about people, to connect with them, and to lift them up. I absolutley love drawing the good out of people, confronting or ignoring their tendancy to focus on the things that need to change in their lives, and instead noticing the gifts there. I find so many people who act like no one has ever noticed their gifts. I think most of them bought an untruth about themselves years back, and are still operating out of something they think is true that never was.



As I write, we are staying at a high end hotel. There is a young guy out front who is supposed to greet people and meet whatever needs they might have. But behind the podium where he sits is a football. And every once in awhile you can just tell he is dieing to throw the thing - to play catch with somebody in the middle of downtown Denver. So as I passed him last night, I said, in mock stadium announcer fashion "He's goin long...." as I started running down the sidewalk. He grinning and tossed the ball in perfect spiral. I caught it and scored a touchdown with 3 second remaining, then tossed it back. He grinned from ear to ear.



The adventure in life lately for me has been entering in with people, being light, making people grin. It is like touching light bulbs and having them instantly turn on. It is like gathering around a warm, glowing fire with some friends, with no hurry to get on to something else. It genuinely is a great adventure, and one I am glad to be on.

Honesty

Honestly, and I sit down to write, I don't know what I want to write about honesty. I suppose that is a good place to start - being honest. It seems to be one of those character traits that gets undefined. I think it is a little like integrity, a little like authenticity, probably somehow related to vulnerability, and in the same ball park as truth. Maybe it is a way of living out being truthful.

I do know a couple things about honesty, amidst all that I don't know. I know that is rare. I know that the opposite is lying, and that it begins first with doing it with ourselves. I know that being honest is really hard, because it means we share the real thing with another person, and doing that means we have to trust them. I know that it is a very naked feeling, one where I risk judgment and critique and condemnation as I share the truth. I also know that it is because of judgment and critique and condemnation that we lie. It makes we wonder which is worse.

Choosing to be honest is an everyday choice. It is ultimately an act of surrender before God, trusting, choosing to believe His take on who you are above what others might think. It is learning to rest in Him rather than listen to the crowds. Our society and culture seem to propagate lying. Its just a lot easier.

I don't know if I can define honesty, but I can share an example. I am not into sports. I played every sport there was when I was young. I was actually really good at almost all of them. I grew up being told that how I performed at sports was the measure of my value as a young man. If I did well, I was a good person. If I lost or didn't do my best, I was second rate, inferior, not as worthy of love and affection. I was measured, and usually felt lacking, when it came to my performance. There, that is honest.

But when I am with other men, all they seem to talk about is sports. Lots of them eat, breath, and sleep their team. Some have t-shirts with their sport and their team on them. Some have trucks with their team embossed somewhere on the vehicle. For some reason, guys are really into sports. And when I am with a bunch of guys, that is what they talk about. Sometimes it is all they talk about. And when asked who I root for, I usually make something up. It is just easier to say 'Da Bears' than it is to explain 'Da history'. If I were to be honest, I would say that I never watch sports, don't watch Tv, and couldn't for the life of me tell you who won the world series, the last Superbowl, or when the last time was I watched a game (or cared to). That would be honest, but it would make me look like a complete dork in the midst of a bunch of sports nuts, and bring a real hush on the conversation. Thoughts about whether I was a real man or not would cross some of the guy's minds. Some would wonder what planet I came from, while others might admire my courage. And some would think I was gay.

I would like to not really care what other people think, and be totally honest all the time. That is my goal. But there is a cost, and when I am really honest, its one I am not always willing to pay.

When I look at the life of Jesus, I believe He demonstrated what it meant to live honest. He didn't let the opinions of people yank Him to and fro (I have always wanted to use those two words in an article, but honestly I don't know what they really mean or how to spell them). Jesus was like a rock unmoved by wind and rain and pharisee prejudice. He lived honest all day long. He lived true to himself. And I guess that's what it means to live honest - to live true to ourselves, living in truth inside ourselves, and living truthfully in our relationships outside, because of the inside.

Leaning into Adventure

I am beginning to see that everything in my life ties back to adventure. For many years I have had 'living the adventure' as one of my core values, but I always thought it was secondary. After all, everybody kept telling me that other things were more important (doctine, theology, Christian things to do) and that adventure was a fringe 'way of doing life' that was, at best, an ideal worth striving for, but not much more than that. That perspective is changing. I am discovering that the very way I do life is adventure - that it IS the way that Jesus meant for us to live. There isn't anything more important.

I am finding that right doctrine and correct theology are the things we usually perseverate on, but like it says in Corinthians, if I can do all kinds of wonderful things and don't have love as I am doing them, I am a clanging gong or a clashing cymbal - lots of noise without any heart. I see that as the number one trap of the followers of Jesus. We focus on the 'rightness' of belief rather than the way we believe. To put it in backpacking lingo (everything is about backpacking for me), we focus on the pack and whether we have all the right stuff in it, rather than focusing on the hiker and the gift he has to offer the world. I mean, which is more important - the sandals Jesus wore, or the man wearing them. It was his 'way of being in the world' that was impactful, not all the other stuff.

Adventure is our way of doing life. It is the way we tackle problems, heed advice, relate to the people in our life, the attitude we have as we walk the walk. For me, life has really become a great adventure. I think that came about fully when I realized that I wouldn't ever arrive at a place where I knew everything, that the path wasn't ever going to be 100% clear, and that God wasn't going to part the skies to tell me what to do. So I began leaning. That means that life feels a little bit like walking around in a dark cave. There isn't any clear path. So I follow the leanings - the gentle nudges, the subtle ideas, the uncertain promptings. And I do so with no guarantee that it is the right thing to do. Sometimes (maybe many times would be a better word), I fall on my face, or was wrong. The longer I journey, the less important 'not failing' becomes. And sometimes I lean and discover a path that I know beyond a doubt is the right path. And I realize that I never would have discovered it if I hadn't leaned just a little.

The hard part is that leaning takes faith. It takes a trust and adventurous belief that God really is with us and walks with us and never leaves us or forsakes us. It is a forward movement despite the circumstances, choosing to believe Him, choosing to trust that He will show up. More than that, it is confronting the false belief that He needs to show up, reminding ourselves that the truth is that He is already, and always has been, there.

So life has become a great adventure again. It feels alive, vibrant, uncertain, dynamic. As a friend of mine used to say, it is 'organic'. It is a living, breathing thing. It is a movement, powered by a foolish trust in an invisible God, deciding that if He really exists, He is probably worth following and knowing.

There is another truth that is beginning to make itself evident lately. It is the truth that I can only really know Him when I lean. There aren't going to be magic answers, no matter how hard I try to manipulate God. It is never going to be a sure path. The very essence of the journey is the uncertainty, and the necessary element of faith needed to walk it. We can't know Him if we aren't willing to lean.

In front of me as I write is a strange picture of a man typing on his laptop, wearing a suit, while sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool. And the pool is full of water. I'm not kidding! I am at a motel, and the motel has several floors with different themes on them. I'm not sure what the theme of a man with a laptop in a pool is. But as I look at the picture, I think to myself that sitting in a pool with a laptop, and having the thing actually work is not possible. Maybe its a really dumb illustration, but the question comes into my mind that says "How would you know if you were never really willing to get wet?"

That's the way life in adventure is. Things in life don't always make sense. I am beginning to wonder if we should stop saying things don't make sense and that the 'lean' is dumb, and decide instead to get wet, and let God do whatever He wants. I mean, it must have sounded pretty stupid to stand in front of a sea with a stick, a couple million people watching, and touch the water with the stick because God told you to, and actually expect that something was going to happen when you did. Thankfully for Moses, something pretty unexpected happened when he leaned out and touched the water with that staff. Where would you and I be as followers of this mysterious God be if he hadn't done the zany?

How would our faith be if Daniel hadn't leaned into uncompromise, if Ezekiel hadn't risked writing down the bizarre, if Abraham hadn't been willing to leave home without knowing the destination? It has always been about leaning into the great adventure. Think about Noah, building a boat, or Elijah pouring water on an altar that was supposed to magically come ablaze, or Joseph leaning into forgiveness toward brothers that had done the unspeakable. All done with that slant into the unknown, with a motivation that made no practical sense, and with an eye on what they would never see. Hebrews 11 is full of them - people willing to walk in the adventure, to trust that invisible God just because it was their unavoidable 'way' of being in the world.

The adventure is still out there. It didn't magically disappear one day. The God who initiates the whisper that causes us to lean forward in faith in the darkness is still calling. And He never intended for us to be safe and secure and in a guaranteed sanctuary of static non-involvement with Him. He designed the adventure. He intended adventure. And He still calls us into the wild today.

So maybe its time to leave what's nailed down, to let go of the immovable and the comfortable, and enter the great adventure of following an unpredictable and very alive God into the darkness of learning to be fully alive.