I've been thinking a lot about risk taking. What that looks like. Why it's important in your walk of faith. How it draws you closer to God. How risks, when taken because God called you to action, are acts of obedience meant to draw you into a closer love relationship with the Lord.
They are different for every person. Something that seems incredibly risky to me may seem like a walk in the park to you, and something bold I've done may be something you could never do. And God wouldn't call you to it.
I believe God calls ALL of us to take risks. Risks that are appropriate for the unique ways in which He created each one of us. It's not fair or right to judge another's walk of faith and obedience to Christ — as brothers and sisters we are to seek out only our relationship with Him and to love and support one another as we each step out in faith.
That act of faith may be to share our testimony with one person. It might be to speak publicly in front of 3,000. It could be that our risk is going on a short-term mission trip for the weekend to a nearby city. Or God could call us to uproot our family and become missionaries in a far-away country.
Risks. We all MUST take them if we want to grow our faith.
As I have been pondering the concept, I was browsing the local library.
I headed to a familiar shelf in the little, little kids section. Straight to an author I love. Straight to my favorite of her amazing books. Verdi. I wasn't thinking about risk. I was just thinking that I super appreciate Janell Cannon's writing, and I wanted to revisit a classic that makes me smile and warms my soul.
My children were 3 and 5 when we first read this book. And re-read it every night for two weeks until it was due back at the library. We checked it out more than once. Grandparents have read it, too. Cannon is an amazing writer who beautifully tells stories of human struggle using animal characters.
Verdi is a python. It just so happens that he is a risk-taker, an adventurer at heart. When he realizes the older pythons are boring, laying around all day and complaining, he tries to avoid growing old. But an accident grounds him, and he is at the mercy of the older pythons who rescued him as they talk about the risks they took in their youthful days while he heals.
They invite him to join them when he's ready to go back out into the jungle, but he refuses. Verdi soon realizes life can be appreciated when he slows down. When two young pythons approach him teasing him for being old and uninteresting, he takes them by surprise when he teaches them some of his old tricks.
In the end, Verdi decides that it's OK to enjoy and express all sides of his personality — an adventurer who loves life in the quiet and the risks.
Thanks to technology, (relative) peace and historic levels of prosperity, we've turned our culture into a crystal palace, a gleaming edifice that needs to be perfected and polished more than it is appreciated.
We waste our days whining over slight imperfections (the nuts in first class aren't warm, the subway isn't cool enough, the vaccine leaves a bump on our arm for two hours) instead of seeing the modern miracles all around us. That last thing that went horribly wrong, that ruined everything, that led to a spat or tears or reciminations--if you put it on a t-shirt and wore it in public, how would it feel? "My iPhone died in the middle of the 8th inning because my wife didn't charge it and I couldn't take a picture of the home run from our box seats!"
Worse, we're losing our ability to engage with situations that might not have outcomes shiny enough or risk-free enough to belong in the palace. By insulating ourselves from perceived risk, from people and places that might not like us, appreciate us or guarantee us a smooth ride, we spend our day in a prison we've built for ourself.
Shiny, but hardly nurturing.
So, we ban things from airplanes not because they are dangerous, but because they frighten us. We avoid writing, or sales calls, or inventing or performing or engaging not because we can't do it, but because it might not work. We don't interact with strange ideas, new cuisines or people who share different values because those interactions might make us uncomfortable...
Funny looking tomatoes, people who don't look like us, interactions where we might not get a yes...
Growth is messy and dangerous. Life is messy and dangerous. When we insist on a guarantee, an ever-increasing standard in everything we measure and a Hollywood ending, we get none of those.
Sometimes you have to take risks to be who you really are. Sometimes you have to risk it all to enjoy life, to get the most out of it, to be a testimony of your faith to others. God is calling you to do something adventurous for Him. Will you embrace the risk? Are you interested in exploring your faith or taking it to the next level? He will gladly meet you there!
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