Safe

As referenced in a previous post, I am reading Francis Chan's, Crazy Love. R. and I are also going through the book in a Sunday School class we're attending.

I am not sure what I was expecting but with a title like Crazy Love - I guess I was maybe thinking we would get M &M's and Sweet-Tarts and instead we get turnip greens and large Lima's. . . okay, I may have lost you with that analogy. . .

The book is heavier than I thought it would be (how's that?).

The book is challenging me and making me ask myself some uncomfortable questions; it's making me re-examine the way that I approach my time with God; it has caused me to begin to take a hard look at my priorities.

Today, in a chapter that challenges the reader to become "obsessed" with Christ, he hit me hard with a note about being safe.

The point of the section was that people that are "obsessed" with following Christ aren't consumed by their own comfort or well-being. He started by reciting a very familiar prayer...

not "Now I lay me down to sleep..." or even "The Lord's Prayer" ... it was the prayer we pray before we take a trip. The prayer for "traveling mercies".

Now most times when all four members of our family are in one vehicle and going in one direction (and those times are too rare lately), we will have a prayer before we start. In recent years, R. and I have delegated that duty to the kids. So someone leads us.

It was Ab that first inserted the line and then later AA started including it at the beginning of the prayer he leads. It goes like this:

"Lord Jesus we thank you for this day.

We pray that no one will get hurt...."

Did you hear that cry for safety... that was something like the prayer that the Fran-Chan-man talked about in the book. How it seems that our greatest desire is for safety.

I think God has already been dealing with me about this in recent years. I have felt His nudging as I prayed earnestly for Him to surround and protect my children. I wonder, is safety God's highest goal for them?

What if we prayed instead - that He might be glorified - even if there was some pain in that process?

Frankly, I know that is what we should do, but it scares me.

Today I thought about the Puritans gathered in the harbor Europe in the 1600's. They were preparing to leave their homeland and sail to an unknown land - the New World. I don't know for sure, but I doubt that safety was their highest priority. In fact there was an underlying sadness as they said good-bye to loved ones because they knew that many would never meet again on earth.

Their trip to establish Plymouth colony and to found many of the "first principles" that came to define America was a grand adventure and if you want to partake in adventure - you can't concentrate solely on safety. Otherwise you'd best just stay at home.

You know, people that are more concerned about being safe... undisturbed. . . than they are about participating in the adventure Jesus would create for them, will give up all kinds of things in the name of safety. Do you ever look around at all the freedoms we have given up in the name of safety?

I have a very fond memory of riding part of the way home from one Florida vacation, on the top of the back seat, warming in the sun filtering through that back window....

I remember other times when I could catch a neat catnap snuggling in the floor of the car's back seat while my older sister stretched out on the seat... these practices are unheard of today.

It is with some regret that I make AA pull his bicycle back into the garage so he can put on that hot helmet, when I know there is a special wonder that comes from coasting down a hill on a bicycle with the wind blowing through your hair.

Once my cousins and I found an old skateboard under my grandparent's house. It was probably left behind from some of my older cousins. It had those skinny metal wheels with ball-bearings in them, and the wheels were pretty much rusted out.

My cousin and I said good-bye after that visit and we each took home with us some pretty impressive scars and road-rash, because we had ridden the wheels off that skateboard.

It hurt, but we had a great time and we drained that old combination of wood and rust of all the speed and adventure she could provide.

When the apostle Paul was heading back to Jerusalem for his last visit, people who were in positions to know kept warning him not to go. There was trouble ahead, it was common knowledge that he would likely be imprisoned. Yet he continued on.

Do you think Paul's biggest concern was safety?

No, he was allowing God to squeeze all the usefulness out of him that he could muster. He was not playing it safe, he was all about delivering the gospel. He would deliver it in the way he lived or in the way he died - it seemed to make no difference to him - just so long as God was glorified.

That trip to Jerusalem did end bad. Paul wound up in jail and eventually was transferred to Rome where he would die for the cause of Christ. Yet he wrote to Timothy just before he died:

"I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." 2 Timothy 4:7 NKJV

I don't hear any regrets in that statement.

I will confess to you: I'm not where I think I should be on this issue. I hope God is taking me there.

I'm not saying we shouldn't pray for our children's safety or perhaps even our own.

But I am wondering if there shouldn't also be an even greater desire for God's will to be done -

for His adventure to unfold in our own lives and the lives of our children.