Forsaking The Comfy Chair For The Zip Line
I love a good comfy chair, my favorite being a channel back I bought years ago in a second hand store. Settling into it as the afternoon sun warms across me, I read a favorite book while tasting the flowery spice of a good cup of Earl Grey. When my mother first saw it, she told me she had held and nursed me in a chair much like it, making it even more dear.
Be transformed by the entire renewal of your minds, so that you may learn by experience what God’s will is–that will which is good and beautiful and perfect. (Romans 12:2b, Weymouth)
At times I feel as if I’ve built my “faith” as a piece of furniture. I’ve assembled and upholstered the perfect comfy chair, accommodating all my weak and tender parts. Anything hard or prickly I cover with a fluffy pillow. The structure keeps me safely surrounded and protected from intrusive concepts. It is establish and set, unmovable and perfected – by a most imperfect me.
God does not call me or you to structure or comfort as our place of faith building. He calls us to relationship – which many times feels unstructured and anything but comfortable. But underneath are the Everlasting Arms.
He also renews my mind. He does it – I don’t. My reasoning and intellect is transformed — an activity initiated by God and brought to pass by virtue of being with Him, not reading about Him in my comfy chair.
A recent weekend felt more like an Outward Bound experience with just God and me. It challenged me to forsake comfy chair for the cliffs and caverns of a full life with Jesus in a wild and twisty world. Will I walk across the rope bridge and hang for dear life onto the zip line, with Him cheering me on? When I fall, will I fall back into His arms? Until I do that, my faith is only structure, only lip-service.
Is God truly good? Can I trust in that truth? The living out of His will – the conforming of my mind to His by walking daily with Him, demonstrates and proves that His desires toward His world and toward me are good, beautiful and perfect.