Sunday, October 17, 2010

Radical...


Disclaimer: This is my attempt at "thinking in a straight line." A difficult process for me right now with all the thoughts running through my head. It's likely to be a little disjointed...

I started this book back at the end of the summer after a friend recommended it to me. It's been good...it's been challenging...it's been something I've needed to read.

I'm about halfway through (I took about a month long hiatus during an insanely crazy season of life....more on that later), but I'm ready to dive back in, and as I do so, I stopped to reflect on a passage that has stuck with me almost constantly from the beginning of the book.

Looking at Jesus' calling on the disciples:

"Ultimately, Jesus was calling them to abandon themselves. They were leaving certainty for uncertainty, safety for danger, self-preservation for self-denunciation." (Radical, pg. 12)

Wow. Yikes. Scary. But....kind of exhilarating too if you stop and think about it. What an adventure! A crazy, scary adventure....but an adventure nonetheless. I think so often as kids, we look around and dream big crazy dreams that our parents, friends, family encourage us to pursue...telling us we can do anything, be anything, dream big, shoot for the moon. We're not fearful....we feel invincible. But then we grow up...and somewhere along the lines most of us (not all of us) allow ourselves to sit back a bit. Step more cautiously. Temper our dreams. Risk less. Maybe it's fear...maybe it's past failures. Who knows. But we lose that desire for an adventure.

*I should clarify....when I speak of dreams of childhood...I think those are good dreams. God given dreams. However, I'm not talking about a desire to get back to those specific dreams. Rather I'm using it to paint a picture of a simpler sense of trust and and willingness to "jump in" that we posses as children in contrast to what often amounts to timid, unsure steps as adults.

My question to myself has been this...what hinders that desire to embark on a wild adventure? For me, it's a combination of so many things. But as I truly stop and think, I am reminded: The final victory is in Christ. He has known the end from the beginning...and the same spirit that allowed Christ to live the most RADICAL life ever lived....lives in me. He's guiding my every step if I'll simply rest and trust...Even a step to abandon myself.

This is my present reality....Learning to rest and trust in the radical life that Christ calls me to. As a dear friend puts it...I'm trying to learn to live palms up, and open handed...ready to give and receive from the Lord as He asks.

And it's a good place to be.

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it...So therefor, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple." Luke 14:26-28, 33