Facing the Fear: The Prerequisite to Dream-Building

You have to take risks, he said.  We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.
Every day, God gives us the sun--and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy.  Every day, we try to pretend that we haven't perceived that moment, that it doesn't exist--that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow.  But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment.  It may arrive in the instant when we are doing something mundane, like putting our front-door key in the lock; it may lie hidden in the quiet that follows the lunch hour or in the thousand and one things that all seem the same to us.  But that moments exists--a moment when all the power of the stars becomes a part of us and enables us to perform miracles. 
Joy is sometimes a blessing, but it is often a conquest.  Our magic moment helps us to change and sends us off in search of our dreams.  Yes, we are going to suffer, we will have difficult times, and we will experience many disappointments--but all of this is transitory; it leaves no permanent mark.  And one day we will look back with pride and faith at the journey we have taken.
Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks.  Perhaps this person will never be disappointed or disillusioned; perhaps she won't suffer the way people do when they have a dream to follow.  But when that person looks back--and at some point everyone looks back--she will hear her heart saying, "What have you done with the miracles that God planted in your days?  What have you done with the talents God bestowed on you?  You buried yourself in a cave because you were fearful. . .  So this is your heritage:  the certainty that you wasted your life."
Pitiful are the people who must realize this.  Because when they are finally able to believe in miracles, their life's magic moments will have already passed.
(excerpt from By the River Piedra I Sat down and Wept, by Paulo Coehlo)


Nearly four years ago I read this novel and here is what I journaled the day I came upon that  passage.  "This is so descriptive of me. . . afraid.  Afraid of launching out into new ministry, new dreams.  And this pictures my ultimate fear;  that I will reach old age, not having pursued and lived my dreams/God's calling.  Only possessing the certainty that I wasted my life.  God, give me courage and discernment.  The latter to know what and where and how you desire we spend the rest of our life together.  The former to go for it."


I look back and see the demanding nature of my insecurity then--wanting to know what, how, when, why, and where before making a move. Today--this season of my life--I can honestly say I'm going for it.  And it feels pretty good.  Really good, actually.   I'm not suggesting that there's a new me and I now refer to myself  as Braveheart;  maybe Tentative Toes, which is to say that fear is still present, along with every other feeling contained on the universal feeling vocabulary list.  But I'm going for it.  We are going for it.  My wife and I are leaving our predictable and secure careers and heading to Honduras for a three month trial-basis to serve the poor.  We will be working with Mercy International, the mission base I have served on short-term mission trips the past 10 years.  We will then return home and they will evaluate us and we them, and a decision will be made as to long-term relocation.


We will leave around the first of March.  This has been years in the making, years in summoning the courage and trust to do this.  Years of clinging to the false security of our comfort zone.  But now we are going for it. 


You have to take risks, he said.

Where Are You, God?

". . . how faint the whisper we hear of him."    

Sometimes beauty is cloaked in sadness, poignancy often evoking a  melancholy sigh.  These words move me.  There is beauty in the meaning and flow of these words.  There is also sadness in the truth of these words.

I have been a Bible reader most of  my life and came across these words this week for the very first time.   They were penned by Job, the man of lament.  They were spoken of God.  In his suffering Job describes God as being nearly imperceptible.   So many of us have asked, Where are you, God?, and  we've been met with absolute silence. The invisible God so often remains just that--unavailable to our senses.   It saddens me that God's whisper so often is so faint.  I need and desire more than the faint whisper.  I want to know, not merely trust.  Be clear, God.  It's terribly difficult to see God in the circumstances.  Sure, when I've sailed in the Caribbean and taken in a beautiful sunset or been staggered by the magnitude of the body of water I "hear" or "see" God pretty clearly.  But it is so hard to see God, to hear God in the hatred, the senseless killings, the perversion, the abuse of daily life.  God, where are you? 

The loud clamor of the chaos in life often drowns out the faint whisper of God.   At times, the clamor has come perilously close to shipwrecking my faith.  There have been several devastating hammerings of life wherein the clamor was so loud that it drowned out God's faint whisper.  The suffering seemed to outweigh the assurance of God's presence.  The whisper was, indeed, faint.  There are times when the severity of life can nearly extinguish the faint whisper of God.

Yet there is also beauty accompanying the sadness of Job's lament.  God whispers; there is a gentleness about God. Often our childhood authority figures form our adult picture of God.  God is not the yelling, shaming father. God is not the loud, belittling teacher.  Nor is God the red-faced, pulpit-pounding preacher who constituted my childhood view of God.  There is a gentleness in God's strong voice. There is a tenderness about the creator of the cosmos.  God is not sheer brute force.  God is not  an omnipotent dictator wielding power unmercifully.  God whispers.  There is a strange-to-our senses story in the Old Testament  about a devout man, Elijah.  He is in a decimating season of his life and cries out, "I have had enough, Lord.  Take my life. . . "  (I Kings 19:4)  Life has unfolded and unraveled in such a manner that he, too, wonders, Where are you, God?    He treks up a mountain hoping to have some encounter, some frayed strand of hope upon which to cling.  The text reads, "Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks. . . but the Lord was not in the wind.  After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.  After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.  And after the fire came a gentle whisper."  God was in the whisper.  There is a gentleness in God's strong voice.  He does not boss his children; he beckons.  God is  not the divine drill instructor who orders; he invites.

We don't scream our intimate affections.  We don't yell our deep love for someone.  We often will kindly whisper our heart's love.  We learned that from God.  God the creator implanted his DNA in us.  God is tender toward you and me.  Life assaults and somewhere in the darkness God quietly assures.

I understand Elijah.  I have undergone seasons where, I, too, "have had enough."  And like Elijah, I await the faint whisper.  I depend on it.