Out of control

It was a warm spring day in Binghamton when I joined the other carefully picked students for a "meet and greet" and tour of the campus for prospective freshmen and their families.  One of the parents struck up a conversation, asking how I liked the school, what my major was, and if I had plans for after college.  He was enthusiastic about the fact that I was majoring in nursing ("good job security there") but not so much about my future plans.

"Don't you know those people get killed?" he asked, obviously concerned.  "It's not safe to go overseas.  There are cannibals.  You can't do that, especially not on your own.  It's not safe," he repeated, with a concerned glance at his daughter as if she might catch some sort of contagious illness from me.  I wanted to laugh, not really sure what to say.

I never told him that I grew up overseas, not always knowing from day to day whether it was safe to go to school, or if we would show up to church only to find it burning to the ground.  We rode motorcycles and climbed exploding volcanoes, hid behind cars during riots, kept our bags packed for months at a time in case of emergent evacuation, and walked by the training schools that sent Jihad warriors overseas to fight the Americans.  As childhoods go, it wasn't really a safe one.  My future plans were only in keeping with the same radical existence...a realization that safety isn't everything.

It is dangerous to work in emergency nursing, never knowing what contagious diseases you may be exposed to or which patients will become suddenly violent.  It isn't safe to sail to one of the poorest countries in the world, a country still recovering from 11 years of civil war and teeming with refugees and demobilized child soldiers, in hopes of reaching out to touch the hurting.  But I don't choose this life because of my background or a blatant disregard for my own safety.  It is in a realization that to live life one must encounter danger on some level.  Danger is not only in a life of wild adventure, it is also in driving a car, in trying new foods, in living, in loving.  Can we neglect our responsibility to reach out and touch lives because of a fear of failure?

We were never promised a comfortable long life as Christians - rather persecution and hardship.  We were not promised riches, but instructed to store up treasure in heaven.  It is an uncomfortable life and an uncomfortable gospel.  Our God is not a "safe" God...

"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."                                             ~C.S. Lewis

"Hidup mulia atau mati syahid"...live gloriously or die a martyr.  My neighbors in Indonesia understood radical faith...how is it that my neighbors in America have missed the boat?  What is the point of hiding in a hole?  To  live a timid existence with minimum risk, only to die in a car crash or fade away with cancer?  You may pass through life with no ripples in the pond, never having lived at all.  Who is to know when your days are through and God will call you home?  You are not in control of your future.  It is God who is in control; God who holds you in the palm of his hand.  As my Dad so often liked to say, "The safest place for us is in the center of God's will."  A life of wild adventure in following Christ may not be overtly safe, but it is GOOD, and God is ultimately in control of what happens.

To others it may look like the terrifying adventures of someone with a blatant disregard for their own life.  Trust me, I don't have a death wish.  For me the safest place for me to be next month is aboard a converted ferry ship in the wide ocean, watching out for pirates, sailing towards a life of love amidst poverty, refugees, and ex-child soldiers.  If I die a martyr...so be it.  I will have lived gloriously in obedience to my King.

...I am out of control.