What is one thing in the Life Together Covenant (LTC) that feels like it came straight off the Mayflower? If you said “No Dancing!” then you’re right. I like to think that some old Taylor provost was just really bad at dancing and didn’t like being shown up during Welcome Weekend. But am I going to talk about dancing? Absolutely not. I want to talk about poker. (Shh... the LTC is watching.)
If you’ve never played poker, then you’re probably a really good Christian. If you’re a natural-born sinner like me, then you understand that the rule of the game is risk. How much are you willing to risk versus a potential gain? Usually, the stronger your “hand” is—not your physical hand, but the cards you’ve been dealt—the more likely you are to risk more of your chips. As I learned my freshman year, “chips” can be either figurative or literal. I ended up losing a whole bag a Lays BBQ in one night. Family size, too!
Of course, if you’ve been dealt pocket aces, chances are you’re willing to risk a lot more of your assets because you’ve got those double-barrels to fall back on. But, let’s say you have a two-nine split in your hand. It’s going to be a lot harder to convince yourself to bet even a few chips, let alone go all-in.
Regardless of where you are now in your life, that next step you are about to take isn’t Geico guaranteed. You may feel super confident—pocket aces. You know when you’re going, where you’re going, why you’re going: you know your calling. Even with pocket aces, though, there is an element of risk.
But, maybe you’re like I was: you’re just staring bullets at that two-nine split in your hand. You feel like no matter what you do next, it’s going to fail. There’s a ton of instability in that scenario. Most people just fold right off the bat. Trust me, I’ve been there. I know what its like to feel like you’re standing at the edge of a cliff, and God is telling you that he needs you down there, but down there’s a rushing river and pointy rocks, and it feels like everything around you is trying to send you over the edge. You can’t help but imagine the worst—tumbling, falling, floating out of control—if you listen to what God is calling you to do, where he is calling you to be.
But, there’s always going to be an element of risk. The likelihood that God is calling you to go full-send off the top of the Grand Canyon of Calling right now is barely higher than the likelihood of you getting in trouble for dancing on campus. God calls us to this moment and the next. The danger in thinking that we are headed to some arbitrary point in the future is that it magnifies our potential risk to a point where most normal human beings can’t handle it. What’s easier to swallow: going all-in on the first hand or betting your chips over time with each new revelation?
We aren’t wandering out alone into the desert. God is walking alongside us throughout the process. Our calling is not a destination we are trying to get to.
It’s the journey we take to get there.
Stay golden,
Noah Huseman
Σχόλια