so live your life, ay!

So my friends Paul and Sara were supposed to be coming to visit me this weekend, but due to some unfortunate events it fell through. They left early afternoon on Friday and were planning on arriving in Gastonia around 10. Mother Nature, amongst other things, had different plans. They ended up in a stand still on I-77 for about 18 hours stuck behind a semi that had jack knifed, and clean-up crews weren’t able to get to it because of the weather until early afternoon the next day. I think it’s times like these when you get to learn if you really know how to live...

It’s easy to be happy and find joy in life when everything’s going well, but when you can go through crappy situations and call it an adventure when your life sucks, that's where you really find out if you know how to live. One of the reasons I love Paul so much is because he’s one of those people who can look at being stuck in traffic for 18 hours in a foot of snow and call it an “adventure”. And to be honest, I really wish I was there to live it with him… I like to think of myself as that kind of person, too.

There have been only a few times that I can really remember being in situations where I didn’t take the crap life handed me, tell it to suck it, and keep on loving life anyway. And I think that’s definitely a place that God has helped me to get to. Before I met Jesus I didn’t know jack about life, except that I wanted it, and I had no idea where to find it. So I tried a lot of different things, and I went to a lot of different places. And I just have no idea how someone can look at life this side of Christ and ever take it for granted. Life, and life abundantly is what Jesus promises to us. Sometimes that’s a blizzard in West Virginia, a jack knifed semi, and some ruined plans. Sometimes it’s watching Jesus do a work in a kid’s life. Either way you cut it, it’s life abundantly and it’s pretty freakin sweet if you ask me!

“Jesus promised his disciples three things - that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy and in constant trouble.” I love it... We aren’t promised that it’s gonna be easy, that we’re not going to get banged up, but I think we are promised that it will certainly be an adventure. Adventures mean risks, it means jumping into things not knowing what’s going to happen or how it’s going to turn out, it means turning your cards over and betting your life on Jesus Christ. And it really should be an easy and joyous exchange. This Jesus Christ is the most attractive person to ever walk the earth. If you call yourself a Christian and that’s not apparent in the way you live and walk through life, there’s something terribly wrong. Christians should be the most attractive, exciting, adventure-living creatures that you ever laid eyes on.

I think there’s this terrible perspective problem out there... People saying things like “Man, I can’t wait to get to heaven and get out of this place.” Well hey, I can’t wait to get to heaven either, and it is “better by far,” but eternity is here. It’s already begun. And if you think that living in utter joy is something reserved for after you die, you are terribly mistaken. We get to experience God now. We get to experience life with Him and know the richness of his grace, the fullness of his love, his might and his strength as he does crazy works in a messed-up, sinful people. This isn’t heaven, but the time to live is now, and it’s awesome!

I had a conversation with someone today kind of along these lines. They were talking about how much of a drag college can be sometimes and how draining it is. And it can certainly be those things. They were really looking forward to being done with school so that they could get out and into the mission field to be able to do what they really wanted to do. And this is something that I am totally guilty of sometimes... The thought that you have to walk through the mundane so that you can get to the exciting. Slap me in the face! If you don’t see yourself as a missionary helping people with health problems while you’re studying your medical books you’re flat out wrong. If I don’t see myself as a missionary while I’m studying the word, praying for kids, and reading every stupid update they put up on the Gaston Board of Education website, then I’m an idiot. The only way that I can do the things that I want to do is by “going into strict training,” and “beating my body and making it my slave.” And these aren't supposed to be unexciting, monotonous times, they're supposed to be times of joy. You CANNOT be a good missionary if you haven’t prepared. The preparation and the adventure can’t be separated, the adventure is in the preparation. Nothing that you do to prepare is mundane, and nothing in life should be treated as such.

Christmas is approaching, and advent is a time of waiting and of eager expectation. For years and years the Jews waited for the coming of the Messiah, and we are to this day awaiting the return of that Messiah. And I think we’re supposed to learn a lot about life in that time of expectation. Mainly that it was meant to be lived. The gospel narrative opens up with a bunch of people waiting for things. Mary and Joseph waiting on baby Jesus, Elizabeth and Zechariah waiting on baby John. The gospels themselves ended the “silent period” of 400 years between the last book of the Old Testament and the first book of the New Testament, which was no doubt a time of eager expectation and waiting for God to speak once again. And it’s all over the bible... Hebrews 11 is full of the stories of countless people who waited in eager expectation but “...did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.” The time of silence, of waiting and eager expectation, or what some may call the “mundane,” is the time of preparation for what is to come. During the “silent period” between the Old and New Testament God was hardly silent. Amongst a long list of things, one of the most important things that was happening during this time was the building up of the Roman Empire and the construction of roads that would enable the spread of Christianity to the ends of the earth. Without these happenings the wildfire spread of Christianity would not have been possible. Without discipline and “strict training” you will never reach the “exciting” times where you really feel alive, and would’ve missed out on a whole lot of living if you didn’t get this right.

All that to say this, life was meant to be lived. And it was meant to be lived in a certain way. Don’t sell it short. Waiting isn’t a period of sitting around with your arms crossed doing nothing, it’s a period of preparing, getting your hands dirty, and living life.

Let this be true of me.