~ Living the Grand Adventure

Living the Grand Adventure

As I go about my day to day “existence” I see so many people around who seem to present the world with an upside down smile, or harder face, to the world that they live in, others seem to be missing the point entirely; they just seem confused about everything. I really find this hard to reconcile, seen from where I live.

Don’t  get me wrong the only silver spoon I have had was plated, and over the last thirty five years I have had enough bad days that turned to weeks, turned to months, and turned to years; most days, usually to turn my smile into a permanent, irrecoverable frown. Lots of that time also I probably looked as if I was somewhere else, or wished I was, the proof of that is all the “lost remembrances” of the decades. To add poignancy to the tale we are now  living a comfortable life fortnight to fortnight

This no doubt gives me a certain sensitivity to the people, Christian and not, who I come across who seem to be enduring a less than abundant life.

For to me life is about living with God as my helmsman calling the stroke while I have my “back to the destination” a lot of the time. Faith I would describe as taking the steps required to reach the next fork in the road always knowing that when I arrive, there will still be more road to negotiate. The significant point that is missing in the definition is the focus of faith.

 Stephen Hawkin, noted physicist,  recently made the headlines of CNN because he made the claim that the creation was not an act of God but rather would/could have happened, from nothing, due to the pull of gravity aggregating the rubble that just happened to be lying around. Hawkin by his own words has demonstrated that his supreme god is gravity, or at the most generic, science.

For a follower of Jesus the Christ there is only one supreme God, and Jesus is his son. At the end of time we are told Jesus will present His kingdom to His Father. We were intended for direct intimacy with Father as the first 3 chapters of Genesis tells and also explain the reason that everyone no longer experiences that. Jesus’ job was, and is to return that status to us.

So back to the adventure that can be life. I see these hurting broken people as they rush about their helter skelter life, or sitting about waiting for something to happen and I wish that there were people in their lives who had the time and relationship to tell them what they need to hear. I am not some up-in-the air hopeful, I am a realist, I know that the basic need that most people have is for is meaningful relationship with someone who has the words of life, and who will take the time to unpack it for them.

You see even during my drug(prescription) hazed days what got me through, and my family, for that matter was that we knew the truth of Romans 8:27-28 where it says “He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.”

I was definitely in pain, often depressed, rarely free to choose what my day’s plan might have included but I did know Father and knew He was looking out for me. That is the difference between the people I come across down the street and in my goings out.

Jesus came that we might abundant life, not just life but abundant life,  the sort of joy filled love exuding into every area of our life and the experience of “God with us” throughout our day that points to the source of our life experience. Don Richardson wrote a book about some of his PNG  experience that he entitled Eternity in Their Heart which is based on Ecclesiastes 3:11 “Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end”

The trouble that I experience is that I cannot change peoples needs and hurts, even Jesus didn’t do that. He left behind a group of people who in the early days “turned the world on its head”  Acts 17:6. We, the Church, are the today representatives of that group and it is our privilege to keep turning the world on its head where we live.

Our desire is for relationship, on a human level, in a belonging community, and on a spiritual level for God: even if we twist that desire away from our creator to something we create.