Adventures Great and Small
In a conversation with a friend last week the subject of "great adventures with God" came up. I thought that was a really good phrase and I have spent some time pondering it- and its comrades- average adventures and small adventures. What I believe is that all of life is, of course, an adventure when God is involved. What's needed most for that is a sense of awe and openness and being aware. God is always doing small things. God's work is going on around us in so many ways that it is hard to pay attention to them all.

Some of these daily adventure possibilities are small- noticing a fresh breeze, hearing laughter, assisting with tears. Some of them are not daily but relatively frequent. These are the average adventures. These are the opportunities for a special ministry, a new way of looking at an old one, or deciding to make some changes in your life that help you follow Jesus more completely.

But it's the great adventures, though, that catch our attention and lead us into places we would never have thought possible. These are the things that change us, our world,our friends, our churches, our denominations. It doesn't need to look BIG and special, but its long-term impact can be huge. I have been blessed to be par of a number of great adventures with God including work in short-term mission development, senior high church camping and AIDS ministry. These are the things that stick out in my mind, but they are part of the full range of following God.

We call this discipleship. We follow the lead of our God, doing what the Savior wants, empowered by the Holy Spirit. Big or small, it is an adventure, never dull, and always filled with opportunities. But it takes the awareness I've already mentioned, the openness to God. But it also takes commitment. It is that moving from centering on self to a centering on God.

Author Tom Bandy of Easum, and Associates has this to say in a new posting on the EBA website:

With the first breath and your last penny, will it be “mission” or “me”? That is the clincher. If people cannot answer that question in favor of “mission”, then they are simply not faithful by any standard of faith and behavior of the earliest church. Period.
--The Clincher, Tom Bandy