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.