Fear and Loathing (at a Target in Memphis)

(Me, Adia, Cara, and Kelly Tilghman)

Love Story

What is life without drama?
What is romance without a little pain and struggle?
What kind of bullshit story has a climax with no conflict?

Every story needs a conflict. It's the rules. Even fairytales are filled with drama, heartache, desperation, and suspense along the way to happily ever after. What fun would it be if Cinderella had it easy? No fairy godmother, no glass slipper, no nothing. There has to be a conflict for there to be a resolution.

But those stories are for entertainment's sake, you might say. They can't be taken seriously.

Okay. Then take the Bible, for example.

Drama, heartache, desperation, suspense. Conflict and resolution. Brokenness and redemption. And, yes, even the promise of a happily ever after.

Can there be redemption without brokenness?
Let me rephrase that.
There can be no redemption without brokenness.

Today's resolution makes yesterday's pain so worth it.
I like redemption, so I'll take the brokenness. That's fine by me.

I love my love story.

It's mine, and I'm sticking to it.

A Leap of Faith

Suppose God tells you to do something that is an enormous test of your common sense, totally going against it. What will you do? Will you hold back? If you get into the habit of doing something physically, you will do it every time you are tested until you break the habit through sheer determination. And the same is true spiritually. Again and again you will come right up to what Jesus wants, but every time you will turn back at the true point of testing, until you are determined to abandon yourself to God in total surrender. Yet we tend to say, "Yes, but— suppose I do obey God in this matter, what about . . . ?" Or we say, "Yes, I will obey God if what He asks of me doesn’t go against my common sense, but don’t ask me to take a step in the dark."

Jesus Christ demands the same unrestrained, adventurous spirit in those who have placed their trust in Him that the natural man exhibits. If a person is ever going to do anything worthwhile, there will be times when he must risk everything by his leap in the dark. In the spiritual realm, Jesus Christ demands that you risk everything you hold on to or believe through common sense, and leap by faith into what He says. Once you obey, you will immediately find that what He says is as solidly consistent as common sense.

By the test of common sense, Jesus Christ’s statements may seem mad, but when you test them by the trial of faith, your findings will fill your spirit with the awesome fact that they are the very words of God. Trust completely in God, and when He brings you to a new opportunity of adventure, offering it to you, see that you take it. We act like pagans in a crisis— only one out of an entire crowd is daring enough to invest his faith in the character of God.

---Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest