So today I got some pics of what the base camp is going to be like in Zambia. It shows a house, but I know we are sleeping in tents:) Having a bit of experience traveling, I know it is so hard to conceptualize what the next 5 month of my life will be like. It is exciting to try though. Something about it being part of the adventure. We all long for that adventure don't we?
This brings me to some interesting thoughts about what adventure really is. Why do we crave this change? There is something wonderful about going home but in order to go home you must have first left. Why do we crave the unknown, the unexplored?
And I think. This is a crazy thing because I will think for years- mulling over and over the same thing until every friend I have begins to show signs of turrets at the sheer mention of those famous words "I was thinking". I ponder about the rise of marriage age in our culture, I meander about in my head concerning why naming a drug crack isn't enough to scare people off, I contemplate sharks living in the river near my house, and I think about adventure.
Obviously I am leaving for an adventure soon. This adventure will usher in the next stage of my life. It will push me through some unseen barrier. It will challenge me. I will be forced to adapt to new people, environments, and my comfort level will be squashed like a ripe and juicy tomato. Why am I so excited? When I first told people I was accepted into a school in Africa, they looked completely perplexed and reminded me that many Africans try to get to school here. Was I confused?
Digression.
Here it is. God has created a longing inside each of us to be a part of something unknown. Something larger, greater, and more effective than we could ever be on our own. We are made in His image with an eye for the unattainable beauty that we are destined for in heaven. Just think about what it says in Romans 8:18-24
18 Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. 19 For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. 20 Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, 21 the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. 22 For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children,[j] including the new bodies he has promised us. 24 We were given this hope when we were saved.
What does this mean? God has placed certain desires within us. We will look for ways to fullfill the longing. This is where it can get crazy though, right? How, if people either dont know or understand how God can fulfill these deep and eteranl desires, does one go about trying. The answers are endless and usually desprately determental.
OK, story illustration. I have the privilege of working with teenagers. The mother of two of the girls recently went through a nasty divorce and in the middle of that she made the wise decision to start smoking crack (yummy). So God had placed within her a talent for raising these girls. She hadn't done a bang up job but the girls were fed and clean up until the crack. This is where you see satan's insidious plan though. Because she wanted to take care of children she let every child in the neighborhood run away from their homes and live in the crack house because she was going to "mother" them all. Wait, it gets better. Before long, all of the kids were being abused by the older crack heads as their budding addiction began to take root. Yes, it wasn't long at all before I watched this train wreck begin destroying lives all around me. I called the authorities and it helped but the damage had been done. To this day, the pain that her misguided desire caused is undefinable.
God has placed certain desires and talents within each of us that will be used! Do not be mistaken. Whether it is to write music (Slim Shady) or to create art (HR Geiger), if don't allow the Lord to not only develop it as well as direct it, it gets used by the world.
So adventure. What does any of this have to do with adventure? What I am thinking is that we all long to be a part of something more. We want a great story. To participate in something amazing. To belong to something powerful. What, How, and When will this manifest in our lives? How will we know how to do this?
Romans 12 talks a lot about knowing what the will of God is.
1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. 2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.
We can know what God's will is for our lives and we can let the adventure that each of us longs for be the adventure that He has planned for us from the beginning of time. The decision about how to cultivate this is ours. He won't force us but He will always prompt us with loving, radical, vivacious, passionate, creating, spontaneous, thoughtful, guiding, and never-ending hands!
