Fool for Christ

"Imagine if you were in love with goodness itself—what wacky things you would do."

This quote resurfaced and I have no recollection of who spoke it or where I heard it.  That matters little enough, though.  It is the thought contained in the quotation and not the speaker to which I wish to draw your attention.

I will digress for a moment first, however.  Yesterday I had the opportunity to go on a spontaneous adventure with a couple of friends.  Having decided upon hiking in the forested park in the middle of the city, we had no expectations of unusual adventure; considering our limited time, it seemed reasonable to enjoy a tamer sort of adventure.  After a brief stop at another friend's house and a dishtowel prophecy—"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson—we continued on to the trailhead.

As we started hiking up the hill, we soon found ourselves scrambling up a ravine with a few pools and trickles of water left within it.  The trail lost its façade of officiality and turned into no more than a deer path.

We might have turned back to find the actual trailhead, but instead we continued on, scrambling over fallen trees and crawling through brush and ferns, following the rocky bed of the ravine in what seemed like a tropical adventure.  The faint trail grew fainter, twisting back and forth across the ravine, sometimes disappearing entirely.

In retrospect, it would have made much more sense to find the trail proper and likely we would not choose that path again knowing what it held.  Yet that makes us all the more grateful for the experience.

You can extrapolate from this story to the adventure of life.  So often we choose to follow the well-beaten trail.  We give in to the pressure of society or the expectations of our friends—or what we imagine them to be—and find ourselves trudging on doggedly, clamping our jaws in the face of the monotony that drags us down.

Let us return now to the quotation with which I began:

"Imagine if you were in love with goodness itself—what wacky things you would do."

It speaks to the heart of what it means to be a fool for Christ.  When you fall so deeply in love with Him—when you learn to trust Him so entirely—you no longer care so much for the security the world offers.  You learn to leap out in faith, knowing that He will catch you.  You embrace every cross and every trial because you know that behind it lies the Providence of the One who loves you more than you love yourself.

Go my friends and be fools for Christ!

Duc in Altum

As I walk beside my friends on this path of life, I see more and more of them choosing to make leaps of faith, whether because circumstances impel them or for some other reason.  From the outside it is easier to see their choices as leaps of faith.  They may still be too caught up in the dreads and anxieties of being forced to choose between goods—or of worrying what might come to pass from their decisions—to see clearly the hand of Providence.

Yet as I see the pattern of Providence spread across these varied lives and places, I find my heart quicken within me.  It encourages me—excites me—to see the working of God in them.

It gives me courage for my own leap of faith as I prepare to launch myself into a new ministry.  However, it also sheds light even upon the little things, reminding me of His working even in my own daily grind.

Certainly it is easier to think of Providence and leaps of faith in reference to some great act or some weighty decision, but even in the lesser things it is possible to leap boldly with faith into the darkness of uncertainty.  For in that darkness we find the One who holds us in His hand.  The deeper we go, the more we discover of the loving gaze in which we may rest.

So let us put out into the deep and there find the great catch of fish awaiting us.  Duc in altum!