Adventure?

Apparently Neil Young once said in a movie to a hitchhiker who knew not of his direction, “if you don’t know where you’re going, does it matter how you get there?”

I think that resonates a lot with my life at this stage of it. I have no clue where I am going – literally, and I have no idea where I’m going on this Race either, but truly, I also have no idea of the direction that I want to go in life.

Typically when a person graduates from college they’re supposed to have some kind of idea about what they want to do. I sincerely have none. I know that I want to go on this mission trip; I know that I want to serve God in some fashion or another, but I’m really not too picky. I just don’t want him to place me in a fancy church. I might not love the people there the way that I should.

Maybe that’s why I like church in the park. It’s a lot tamer. I know that sounds crazy – church tame in a park full of drug dealers and prostitutes? Yeah, it’s tame. Another word for tame is ‘broken’. You don’t know what to expect. I think that’s partly what I like about it. We’ve never had a fight break out (yet) but I’ve seen some drug deals go down at church on Sunday. How many people can say that? We got booted out of our park one time because there was going to be a “Gay Pride Festival”. Yep. We shovel the snow off the sidewalks in the winter. We stand outside in the rain. Most other churches these days get into fights when there’s juice spilled on the carpet. It would be much more entertaining to see blood on the carpet from a fistfight. Then I would probably go visit that church with a bag of popcorn. The pastor obviously delivers powerful sermons.

I don’t know though. Most days I think I know what I want to do but I don’t. I tell myself that I want to be a missionary. In all honesty, I really do. I want to work with kids. I want to work in an urban setting. Urban missionary work – that would be sweet. I don’t know if that’s what God has planned for me though. Maybe He wants me to be the next president of the – okay, just kidding...

My friend in the Peace Corp said that while working for them, you begin to learn how to take living just one day at a time, hour-by-hour, minute by minute. I’m starting to embrace that philosophy on life. God reveals such tiny portions of where He wants me, but never when I want to know it – only when I need to. Does it get frustrating? Heck yes it does. But does it matter? No.

That’s part of the adventure. If I knew where I was going to end up at the end of my life I would probably not like it, but it’s because I would miss out on the life in between. Maybe there’s a reason I end up there. Who knows? Only God Almighty does and I’m okay with that most days. Other days I want to be God, but after dwelling on the responsibility that job description entails, I embrace my humanness and decide it’s best to take orders from Him.

The World Race is no different. Yeah, I don’t know where I’m going yet. But that’s part of the adventure. I didn’t sign up to travel the world on a vacation. I signed up to wreck my life in the name of Jesus, for the name of Jesus, to see the Kingdom of God manifested in some pretty radical ways.

I don’t know where I’m going and I don’t give a rat’s ass about how I get there. Just bring on the adventure.