Great Adventures

Adventure defined ...

• Scaling a precipitous mountain to a Tibetan village of eighteen families.
• Bouncing along on a rock-strewn dirt road between Sichuan and Yunnan, minus guard rails and ever-mindful of the thousand foot drop into the Long River.
• Bobbing about in a seafood shack, afloat in a bay of the East China Sea.
• Eating rose petal-filled pastry at the Lijiang fire festival, a folk celebration that had the city aflame with street fires.
  

All of these were part of the Great Adventure that ended today for me when I pulled into my home on Layton at 2 a.m. It's a long way, geographically and ideologically, from Yunnan and Tibet to Layton Road. 

Sleeping away the the twenty-plus hours of flying time during the long return from the other side of the world helped in reorientation, but nothing reacclimates a mind to the realities of Western culture better than Hollywood!

So I attempted to regain my cultural "legs" by selecting an in-flight animated movie called UP! Inadvertently, UP! had me contemplating the nature of "adventure" rather than laughing at an old man's bumbling efforts to get to South America.

Carl Fredricksen, the movie's main character, had married his childhood sweetheart, Ellie. They shared the mutual desire to follow in the steps of the great explorer Charles Muntz. In his dirigible, the Spirit of Adventure, Muntz had discovered Paradise Falls and a variety of exotic creatures in South America. Ellie and Carl made it their life-long dream to eventually visit Paradise Falls. In fact, he promised her they would do it.

But life happened. The Fredricksens had to borrow from their trip savings account to pay for tires,

house problems, and health issues, and in less than five minutes movie time the couple aged, Ellie died, the dream adventure never happened, and Carl sat glumly on his front porch, a bitter old man wondering where time had gone and regretting the adventure never taken.

The crux of the movie comes when Carl discovers Ellie's scrapbook "The Spirit of Adventure," and he sees the photos she pasted in the "Stuff I'm Going to Do" section. The photos chronicled their daily life together: marrying, setting up house, picnicking, sitting together in their easy chairs. Carl realized they had lived the adventure ... everyday.

This past month in China had all the elements of Great Adventure: foreign places, strange food, intriguing people, exotic cultures. But it was the adventure of a lifetime, not because of those things, but because it was an adventure planned and orchestrated by God for His purposes and His glory. Sightseeing and exploring were secondary. An adventure with God is not limited to these special foreign "mission" trips. Watching God do a work each day in people's hearts ... this is life's Great Adventure.

Like the Fredricksens, we can live the adventure every day.  A prayer for God to use us each day doesn't have to happen on a mission field. This prayer is not reserved for Fuzhou, China: "Lord, this day is Yours. Use my hands, my heart, my mind, my mouth for Your glory today. Let people enter Your kingdom and a relationship with You today, and open my eyes to see it happen, to see You at work in the world around me ... right here on Layton."

Great Adventures don't have to wait for Paradise Falls, South America, or Yunnan, China. Great Adventures for God can happen right here, right now.

Thanks, Lord, for helping me to live the Great Adventure everyday ...

even right here 

on Layton.