The Adventure in Life

Do you find it as difficult as I do to stay on the "narrow path?" There are so many things that are constantly pulling at us. Life most days feels like a carnival Bumper Car ride. Just when you get the path cleared in front of you enough to gain some ground, you get side swiped. Before you know it, you're chasing what just hit you, just so you can hit back. There's not a lot of progress in that however. So what should our reaction be when our life gets disrupted?

I've just recently come through the valley of the almighty flu bug. Talk about disruption! I lost a week of my life. A good chunk of it is mostly a blur. I've struggled to find the silver lining in it, but there are a few obvious nuggets for me. I could have been traveling last week. Actually, I had planned to, but in October I opted not to follow through with the arrangements for various reasons. Was God in that? Probably. Of all the weeks I could have afforded to be down, last week was probably the best one for my schedule. Was God in that too?

I read a great article while I was trying to recoup. I needed some inspiration. I needed something to pull my spirit back into the right place. I was in basic survival mode, and most of my routine went out with the cleanex. In the March/April issue of Discipleship Journal, David W. Henderson writes in his article, Let The Adventure Begin, "God is always near, and ever up to something." "When God shows up, an adventure necessarily ensues." Ah, yes an adventure to live. I needed to be reminded of that. That's what our life is about. Even in sickness, there is adventure. (I can't believe I just wrote that.) What I began thinking about though, is how my body was battling this illness. It was a brutal fight. My immune system was a mess. I felt awful, near defeat for a couple of days. It became a metaphor of sorts for me, how the Spiritual battle must be on a daily basis in the Spirit world. I remember the day where I felt the tide shift and I began to have a sense that I was feeling better. We were winning the fight, and the enemy was retreating.

Was that the point of my illness? Who knows. That's just the way I chose to view it. But the reality is that there is battle ensuing all around us. And it's a reality that many people don't embrace with any appreciation. Look at what Henderson said; "When does the adventure of life slip into an inconvenience or erode into a predicament? For me, it's when I forget about God and slid into functional atheism; when I act as though the universe is a closed system, a box with a lid on it, and all it contains is me and whatever I'm facing. In such a universe, if something is going to happen, it is all up to me. Diminishing finances, a self-absorbed spouse, aging parents, the lure of pornography, a recalcitrant child: I am alone in facing them all. No adventure in that."

No matter what situation we find ourselves in, we have to remember that God is there in it too, with us. Remember, we have the Holy Spirit. God said, "I will never leave you or forsake you." (Joshua 1:5) We have to keep Spirit minded about everything we do. And everything we do should be directed by the Spirit. If we can learn to live in that mind-set, then we can understand that everything we experience is coming from the Father in one way or another. He's teaching us. He's leading us. He's growing us. He's resting us. He's renovating us and restoring us to the original state He intended from the beginning. He's bringing us home. Halleluiah! Let the adventure begin.