"God's call, vocation, is twofold. God calls us saying, 'Come and follow me.' We arrive and then we must follow. We find but must go on seeking. God's call is a never-ending call, to the unknown, to adventure, to follow him in the night, in solitude. It is a call incessantly to go further, and further. For it is not static but dynamic (as creation is also dynamic) and reaching him means going on and on. God's call is like the call to become an explorer; it is an invitation to adventure."
(Ernesto Cardenal)
To see God's call on our lives is to see the spiritual journey in a completely different way. We don't anticipate anything new happening so we often don't look for the new. We expect things to stay the same...the way they are...with just a little religious veneer over the whole experience. We may be "finders" in the spiritual life but we are also "seekers" - and the seeking never ends. To do church is not to enter into a way of "blessing our static existence" but church...worship...spiritual practices...are a way of nudging us along, encouraging us along the way...guiding us on the journey...as we engage in our spiritual journey.
To see the spiritual life as an "invitation to adventure" is to open ourselves up to a whole new way of seeing...and believing. Sometimes I run into "spiritual people" who seem to be having anything but an adventure. The spiritual life seems a drudgery. It adds nothing to their lives. It keeps them respectable but that's it. We need to move far beyond the notion that Jesus came to our world just so we could figure out how to live respectable lives. Jesus came so that we could live lives of redemptive risk, of holy adventure, to explore depths we would otherwise never explore.
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