Pit Boss Reflections

Have you ever considered the first time someone bit into a peach?

Think about it.  
This is a fruit that looks delicious, but harbors a dark secret.  It is a truly odd sight.  Something totally and completely unexpected.  It looks alien, like something from another world.

The peach pit.

Do you realize how gnarly a peach pit is? It looks like an alien landscape crossed with an internal organ. Can you picture biting into a peach without knowing what was inside, and the moment you reached the center? (The HORROR!) It is entirely possible the person just totally destroyed their tooth...maybe even broke several.  

Exhibit A: The Peach Pit

Was it worth it? 

Was he referred to as the Pit Boss after that?  

These are important questions.   

They get at the sense of the unknown, and the sense of adventure that is seemingly innate in us as people. My fore-fathers and mothers sailed across an ocean to plant churches and communities. My grandparents moved to New Guinea in a quest to build God's kingdom in one of the more remote places on the planet. We dream of Siouxland. (Exotic destinations are in my blood)

Whether it is biting into a peach or embarking across oceans, we are creatures of vision.  Of mission. Of wild dreams of new things.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him...

Something in that image is adventurous. Is risky. God knows everything and is all powerful, but we still question both in light of the risks he has taken in creating and loving this world. Love is a great risk.  

Like discovering peach pits. (Love rates a bit higher on the risk scale)

We are driven into the unknown by The Barely Known. By the One who compels people into the wilderness and into strange journeys of compassion and grace. The One who uses donkeys, fish, and giants to help show people the way. We are driven by the One who risked everything, His Best Thing, that we could be loved, and known, and that the fractured image of Him in us could be restored.  

Our faith is not that we would be untouched by the danger, or come through unscathed. Jesus was quite...well, scathed...and had the scars to prove it. Our faith is a faith to go with Him. Or that He goes with us.  (Answer: hopefully both at the same time) And He is the one who is more dangerous than the danger, who overshadows it, who engulfs and transforms it with a severe mercy I am barely capable of remotely grasping.  

Yet we continue to grasp. To wrestle. To clutch onto our life in Christ and never let go of Him, or of the mission He gives us to show and tell the good news. And I am finding that willingness takes you to some pretty wild places. Like Bangor, Pennsylvania. Or Sioux City, Iowa. Or whatever place you find yourself in...

Have you ever considered some of humanity's firsts? How are you inspired to take your next step?