This summer proves to be an exciting one for our family with multiple camping trips planned to destinations around the western United States. The thought is that we’ll catch campsites along the way, not often staying more than one night, and we’ll get a really broad experience — a big picture view of what there is to see.
Our first tour will be Utah’s National Parks. We’re hoping to see Zion, Arches, Moab, Mesa Verde and all points in between. Great fun, right? Hiking and exploring opportunities, photos to be taken, camping out under big starry skies — I imagine such bonding memories for the family.
I’ve got my eye set on Yosemite too. And bike touring the San Juan Islands. And sledding down the sand dunes in Florence, OR. And a return trip to our favorite campsite at Beverly Beach.
Big plans. Exciting adventures.
But the little ones? They don’t know if it will really be fun. They have said they might want to stay home and play on the computer. They don’t want to leave their neighbor friends. They would sacrifice amazing adventure for the familiar, just because they know what they’ll be getting into.
Hmmmm. Makes me think about our steady, middle-class, routined, comfortable lives. Lives where we usually know what to expect and we like it that way. New neighbors might move in or the hours at our gym might change, but that’s the extent of it. We feel secure in the life we’ve created for ourselves. We don’t push the envelope much. Life is pretty cozy.
And we don’t know what we’re missing. I don’t know — think we’re missing anything??
I read Jennie Allen’s book “Anything” a couple months ago and was Blessed. With a capital B. It’s intense, it makes you think. See — Jennie started feeling like pushing the envelope might be a good thing. Like it might be what she was created to do.
“I started craving …a restless faith, a faith where I knew God was real because I needed Him, a faith were I lived surrendered, obedient, a faith where I sacrificed something…comfort or safety or practicality…something…”
–Anything by Jennie Allen
I’ve felt that tug, that drawing out of my soul, that desire to be part of something bigger, something deeper. The life of a mother can feel like one mundane task after another if we forget that we’re raising Children of God. But that’s the point — are we living like this life is a grand adventure where we are one of God’s main characters in a drama worth watching? Are we climbing aboard for the adventure of a lifetime with the Author of our story behind the wheel?
Jesus says that He knows the plans He has for us {Jeremiah 29:11} and He has work that He has specifically designed us for {Ephesians 2:10}:
But we grasp for control.
We don’t understand His ways.
We hide among things and people who are in our zone of comfort.
We fail to see beyond our short lives here.
I really really want my kids to get excited about the adventures I have planned for them this summer!
I think God wants the same thing. But He’s talking about your whole life.
