Adventure and Hope

The word “adventure” implies risk, stepping out of one’s comfort zone, and  maybe fear and danger. People we often describe as “heroes” are not people who are not afraid, but those who overcome their fear. They confront, name, and move beyond their fears. For people of faith, “holy heroes”, while afraid, are people who know they are not alone. They accept God’s promises that they will not be abandoned or forsaken; they know that they live in God and that God goes with them into the risks, through the fears and danger. And because God goes with them, they have nothing to ultimately fear. They are free to risk the adventure. Those who choose not to live in a growing, maturing, honest relationship with God, rarely live out adventures. For many people their life is encompassed in a small circle of existence. They live on a little treadmill: getting up and going to work or school, coming home and going to bed; getting up and going to work or shool again—an endless cycle ( or at least it seems like it). There are many variations of this treadmill existence, but you get the idea. It isn’t going anywhere and it is devoid of any real adventure or growth.
      To break free of this treadmill doesn’t necessarily mean we stop going to work or school or throw off the routines of our lives, but it means that we have to create time and space to break free, to go on a journey. The journey doesn’t  necessarily have to be physical one, although sometimes that or pilgrimage is  what we should do. Often the journey that is needed is an inner one – one that  involves prayer and silence and reflection.
      Often when we find ourselves stuck in a rut or wandering in a maze, instead of breaking out (or scaling the walls), or undertaking the journey of prayer, we sit down. Lost in the maze of our lives, we peek around the corner, fearful of what might be out there ahead of us. Not too long ago 90% of the population,  when asked the question: “What are you living for?” replied, “I’m waiting for something significant to happen!”
      “Waiting.” People are waiting for various things: to get through school, to find a job, to find a partner, for children to grow up and leave home, elderly parents to die, a new job or a raise or a change of responsibility to further my career and, hopefully, improve my life. People wait for many things, especially waiting for something significant to happen in their lives. They are bored or exhausted or confused or wandering. What are you waiting for?
      It is easy, when we are waiting, to excuse ourselves from responsibility: “If only I didn’t have this problem, or this job, or this person were out of my life….” But that really doesn’t help. There will always be something to wait for. There will always be some excuse that we can offer for why it is better to wait than to act. The problem is making that thing you say you are waiting for  an excuse that keeps you from moving forward, that keeps you from making life the adventurous journey it was intended to be. And part of the adventure, maybe  the most important part is taking a chance on God and the future.
      We are all on a journey. The basic human journey is that from the cradle to the grave. But there are many other aspects the journey. If that journey has lost its adventure, its excitement, maybe it is because we have forgotten that as followers of Jesus, we are not on this journey alone. God is with us and we have one another. But maybe the journey has lost its adventure and excitement  because we have lost sight of our destination. Maybe we can no longer envision  all the love, joy, peace and excitement that will be ours when we finish our  earthly journey and which can be experienced to  significant degrees in this life as foretastes of what is to come.

      This is where Lent comes in. It is a call to remember, to reflect, to  recommit, to restart. These forty days before Easter call us to remember  who we are created to be and redeemed to become in Christ; to  reflect on the ways that we are living our lives that turn them into treadmills rather than adventures; to recommit ourselves to move beyond waiting and excusing to moving forward – to restarting them. We journey  in hope and the hope that sustains us is the hope poured into our lives and  world by the resurrected Christ who joins us on the journey and shows us by his life how to live life as an adventure. Peace