Living Dangerously

After sitting through most of our church missions conference, and then leaving to drive 11 hours straight to Atlanta (I love my job), something struck me, somewhere on Highway 78 between Memphis, TN and Birmingham, AL: Life is Dangerous. Yeah, I know that you can turn that into a justification for living as a hermit in the side of a mountain, beard and all. But what I was really thinking as I drove through the heartland of the South was that to live your life well, you must live dangerously. And okay, that can really be taken as license for being stupid, which I'm definitely not advocating. Please, friends, do not go to the mountains to dwell in cliffs, turning into some slimy, ring-obsessed creature; and do not go to the mountains to take a flimsy piece of fabric, a few aluminum tubes, and jump off the side to hurdle head-long into the wind.

Yeah.

Okay, so what do I mean by "Life is Dangerous"? Just this: that the life that follows Jesus isn't necessarily a "safe" and comfortable experience. Some of the most beautiful things that I have ever heard came this past weekend, listening to people who risk their lives for the sake of the gospel. And what I wanted was to live a beautiful life. But that beautiful life is going to come with danger. There are risks and struggles, and there is a certain reality that you do lose your life. You may not physically die in following Jesus (though there are many people dying for him even this very day), but you no longer have control over what you will or will not do because someone else has control of your life. I don't believe that God is a director who just "tells" me where to go - but I do believe that being God, he has created a life for me that is good and beautiful and ultimately leads to his glory and my good. But that doesn't mean it is always safe.

So what does it mean right now, having written these words on my hand each day of the last week, that life is dangerous? It means that I can't sit back any longer and question whether God is good and trustworthy. I know that he is good. And where he has called me to act, I must act. Where he has called me to wait, I must wait. Where he has called me to live, I must live. I have a great hope that the Lord will use me for his kingdom. I want for those young women to whom I minister to see the beauty and joy of the gospel. And I want them to know the truth: following Jesus, being made into his image, is not always wonderful to experience. But echoing C. S. Lewis' Mr Beaver from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, it's not always safe, but it is good.

I'm meditating on Psalm 23, remembering that when we read "the valley of the shadow of death" that the hebrew indicates a valley of "deep darkness" - a place where we would rightfully be scared. But what does David say? He fears no evil for the Lord is with him. Walking through the place of darkness and fear, following in the footsteps of our Lord, we can be assured that even where we think that he is not with us, he is still there. A dangerous life is only a life that recognizes the truth: we pass through the valley of the shadow of death, we make our bed in Sheol, we sit in the belly of the whale and sit in the quiet places, we follow and we run away, but the Lord is always with us. And where he takes us, he is surely going to be faithful. May we have eyes to see his goodness and hearts that trust his will for our lives.