By Daniel Garner
"Let us not become wear in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up" - Galatians 6: 9
"Perseverance, secret of all triumphs" - Victor Hugo
One of the things that's bombarded our thinking in most recently memory (courtesy of the rumor-mill that is some parts of our media) is the Ebola virus. So, I think I've discovered a solution to both it and our ailing economy:
Web MD paid subscriptions.
If we would just market that to hypochondriacs we'd be golden! "Feel a bit tired and you sneezed twice yesterday? Yup, you've got the Portuguese Airborne Swine Tuberculosis Ebola Strain!"
So while the Ebola hype reached its crescendo I went to what was being called Ground Zero (Dallas Texas) for a pastors conference. While I was on the way there I had a few friends call me and ask if I was crazy thinking it was okay to go to the conference! In addition to those friends I had others who said they weren't going to get within 100 miles of Dallas for fear of Ebola. So, it got me thinking. While I didn't think it was crazy for me to go others thought it was. The ones who stayed outside of Dallas stayed within the reach of their lives' safety nets, not wanting to go beyond them for fear of danger.
In some way, we all have built-in safety nets for our lives. Our little bubbles where we feel safe and secure and feel uneasy whenever we think about going beyond them. We have a lot of them with all different kinds: Emotional, Spiritual, Physical and more.
As an example for the emotional kind when I was younger, when I hurt, I used to console myself by telling myself (like most kids) a variety of things. That whatever pain I was going through at that time or whatever trauma or torment that was happening would never have to happen again. I built around myself an emotional safety net that I was certain would protect me. But that’s just not how life works. Difficulties sadly do not stop by willing their cessation and on any given day a myriad of good and bad things happen to us. But just because a bad thing happens doesn't mean we can decry our life as bad. Just as we’re made up of atoms or lives are a construction of experiences. And just because tragedies happen it doesn't make the good that follows in their wake trivial or inconsequential. Lives are made and broken in the intangible spaces between the good and bad. Life isn't always what we choose to make it, but how we react to it is.
But sometimes it works not just for intangible things, but also actual objects. At any church I've ever spoken at I always measure the distance between the door and the pulpit. Peoples entire worlds can exist in that small space. Births, baptisms, weddings; deaths. It's that small space where peoples lives can be won, or lost. That's why it's so important to place faith where it's warranted and not in pews, carpets and sound systems, by the way. Those don't matter. But the person sitting next to you does, and for Whom you're there in the first place. The safety net that is our church is a good one, and a strong one. God wants us to feel secure in His church and wants us to grow. But sometimes He wants us to grow beyond the church walls and that can scare us. For some He calls them to be missionaries, going beyond the church walls to countries hundreds of miles away.
Looking back on history there was a time when someone would tell you that the world was flat. There was a time when someone would call you ignorant for thinking there was anything beyond Rome, that ever shining Eternal City. There was a time that beyond the farthest known sea's there were literal dragons. These were the safety nets and things beyond them of people God led to do many of the same things He calls us today to do.
It takes faith to know that beyond what we know, whether it’s geography, knowledge, or pain and loss; that there's hope. The farthest land and ocean, the deepest sea and the farthest star, and the love to fill the hole that only pain had previously filled. Who are we to say “no” to stepping ever forward into greater knowledge? Who are we to say what limits discovery? Hope? And grace?
The Takeaway: Going beyond our lives safety nets can be scary, but God promises to be with us through every step and beyond and every blessing there that He has in store for us.