So I'm heading off to Haiti in a couple of weeks. My excitement is tainted only slightly be a sense of anxiety over the whole situation that I've been trying to process. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and kind of alongside that comes the fact that Haiti isn't exactly safe. I take me safety for granted a lot I think. I can count on one hand the amount of times I've even seen a gun in real life, or witnessed a display of violence, or probably even the amount of times I've seen a movie with extreme violence. But I've been thinking lately of what it means to trust God with my safety, with my life.
I was thinking, (perhaps a little morbidly), what if I never made it back from Haiti? I realized how much value I place on my earthly existence, and how much of a stretch it can be to get me out of my elbow pads, helmet and airbags, bubble life. A passage from Shane Claiborne's The Irresistible Revolution keeps running through my head. The idea that God didn't call us to live safe lives. I mean, he also didn't call us to be reckless and negligent with the gift of life he gave us, but there are absolutely going to be times when God may call us in a direction that has some risk involved.
I would love to be in the head space where I think, "If God can be glorified more through my death and surrounding events, then in my continued life, then a) maybe my life isn't giving God adequate witness, but b) to God be the glory, take me home." I'm not exactly there yet, and I know that this whole train of thought is a little on the dramatic side, but bare with me. I don't think I'll ever be able to say I'm completed detached from this world as long as people I love are still here. But, what if I'm willing to concede that this journey I've been called on is maybe full of more risks and requiring more courage than I realized.
In Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Miller talks about the formula for the greatest life story. He says that the greatest stories involved characters that set near impossible goals and have to endure great personal sacrifice to achieve them. Am I willing to sacrifice my safety in order to further the kingdom and spread some love? And not just in Haiti, I means that's only a week of my whole year, which is just a year in a lifetime. Beyond that, am I willing to take risks daily? Social risks? Financial risks? Emotional risks?
The title of this post is the title of a book by John Ortberg. Probably 8 or so years ago, my old church did a kind of series of sermons based on themes from the book. Although I was a little young to fully appreciate the messages at the time, I am really game to dive into the book now. The whole idea is that we have comfort zones, and that we need to break out of these, specifically our spiritual comfort zones. Where our fears begin is one decent indicator of where our comfort zones end. We have to take steps of faith, like Peter, each day in order to expand our comfort zones and increase our overall usefulness. The first step is just having the desire and the willingness to step out of the boat.....check.
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