Would you be willing to....

I wonder what the limits are to what we would be willing to do to follow God. I sometimes imagine the very antithesis of the way I live, and ask myself if I would live that way if God called me to it. For example, I could never work in a factory. I would need to be hospitalized within three months for psychiatric disorders (new ones, not the ones I already have). But if God parted the clouds and said "Mike, I want you to work in a factory for $8 an hour," I would. It is the parting of the clouds that makes that answer easy.

But what about all those times in life when the sky doesn't do anything, and there isn't any voice? I guess we do whatever makes the most sense. And if we do, what guarantees do we have? Deeper still is the question of where the heck we got the idea that following God was going to have anything to do with guarantees. That stupid notion sure isn't from anything I read about in the Bible. Except for a couple very select individuals, God didn't hand out many guarantees. What He handed out was faith.

So faith is what we do when the sky doesn't part. It is what we do because there is no clear direction as to what to do.

I suppose some day, when I am older and balder and not backpacking quite as much, I will look back at the 'steps of faith' moments, and they might make sense. Then again, they might not. He is still worth focusing out faces toward as we blunder on in the journey.

I guess His presence is the guarantee.