Risky Business

Monday morning I woke up early, had some God time and hit the road around 4:00am. As I rode along I was finishing the conversation with God about fear. About then it occurred to me: I was running in the pitch dark at 75mph, the speed limit in Arizona which, apparently, virtually nobody obeys. This usually doesn’t worry me, but I had just passed a sign warning that elk cross the road in this area.
Some fear is good.
The fear I need to remove is the fear which doesn’t speak wisdom but simply immobilizes me. Realizing my peril on the bike, I found an exit with a truck stop, bought some gas talked with some truckers and waited for the sky to glow with morning light. The wrong fear doesn’t produce an alternative; it simply deflects us from what we are able to do.
As long as there is one shred of the wrong fear in my life, I will always default to avoiding problems and not solving them. As long as I fear, I will never dream again. As long as a fear, my ability to love is severely limited.
Why?
Because love is risky. To really love, you have to lay it ALL on the line. This is why marital intimacy is so amazing: two people reveal all there is to them, and they accept each other completely. That’s love: to know it all about a person and to choose to open yourself to them as well. That’s a risky deal.
Here is the rub: as long as I allow fear to determine my actions, I really can’t freely offer myself. The risk meets the fear and the fear stops me in my tracks. As long as I am tempted by fear I can’t love the way love is supposed to operate. Its like you drive into Yosemite and find a McDonald’s built at the base of the Bridal Veil Fall. We KNOW it is not supposed to be like that. Maybe we don’t know exactly what it should look like, but we know that positively is not the way it ought to be.
As this thought was forming in my mind, I was traveling along I-40 heading East. The sky was beginning to glow with morning light, and the desert came into view. I thought about the men and women and children who crossed this land on foot and horse and wagon. They faced the environment, the hostile Indians, the wildlife… and kept moving forward. What drove them? I would have turned around unless there was a passion and a dream. I mean, I have never seen a less hospitable place.
Just passion will make a beautiful life, but couple passion with a dream and extraordinary things happen.
Deserts get crossed. Fields get planted. Railroads and telegraph wires are run. Business and ministries started. Lives are changed. Communities are changed. Nothing stays the same. The power which drove the pioneers across the desert has the potential to rock our world. It starts this way:
1. Identify the things you fear. Make a plan and face them one at a time until they are gone.
2. Open yourself to put it all on the line for another person. Reveal anything they ask you to reveal. Hold nothing back. When they reveal themselves, explore the wonder of a landscape you previously didn’t know existed.
3. Search the horizon for the formation of the clouds… these are your dreams: those wispy things at the limits of your imagination. They must be nurtured in the environment of fearlessness and passion, allowed to coalesce, and embraced when they arrive. The dreams come only after the fear is gone and the love has grown… its only then that dreams may gather.