It should not be supposed that God's adventure is captured only in the ministry of Jesus--far from it! Think of the adventure that is involved in creation itself, in God's call of a nation named Israel , in the guidance granted mercifully to them in the gift of the law. Think of the adventure of God as it is expressed in Isaiah 43:
Forget the former thing;
Do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.
In the story of Scripture, I see a narrative of an adventurous God--a narrative in which God becomes vulnerable to our world's pain and leads us forward in hope. This, it seems to me, is the ground of our call to live our lives as a sacred adventure. We worship an adventurous creator who calls us to live adventurously.
1 comment:
Frankly, Steve, I don't know how else to read scripture than in terms of adventure. Safari. Journey. Trek. "He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his Name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for Thou art with me." Adventure, may be, part of the nature of God and it certainly connects to the restlessness of human beings and the dilemmas of the human predicament. St. John of the Cross wrote a poem about the adventure of God... his journey was internal. Abraham: go. Moses: go. Hardly anyone in scripture is told stay. Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem--in some sense, I think, the cross was an adventure. Not always pleasant--who knows what lurks around the next bend in the road...or what about when we find ourselves walking cross country without a trail? But other times: "He makes me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside still waters. He restores my soul...."
Arthur
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