Authentic Life chooses Significance over Safety

We all experience seasons of heartache, uncertainty, and loss. At times, the foundations of our lives are rattled to their core; leaving us with more questions than answers, more doubt than hope, and disillusionment over the mess our lives have become. 

In his book Uprising, Erwin McManus compares life with whitewater rafting. There are seasons in life where we leisurely float down the river, there are times when we are jostled about, yet secure in the boat, and there are times when the circumstances of life heave us out of the safety of the raft and into churning waters. Smashed against the rocks, beaten, and dragged along by the river, struggling for breath, we eventually find ourselves on the safety of the bank. It is on that bank where we will inevitably make a choice to embrace faith or fear; significance or safety?

Fear entices us to remain on the embankment. While it may feel safe to linger there, on the bank we will neither move forward or backward; we just sit while life passes us by. Safety may feel a semblance of life, but clinging to the bank is its own self-imposed prison. When we remain captive to the embankment; bound by guilt, imprisoned by shame, enslaved by regret, and confined to the wounds within our heart, we thwart real life and real freedom. On the bank we will never experience healing, restoration, or the fullness of life. 

Authentic life and freedom are found by moving into the boat; into our stories and our pain. Faith demands we get back in the boat and trust that life awaits us further down the river. We need not relinquish our trepidation, our questions, or our feelings. We need only press forward; for the beauty, character, freedom, and life to be raise from our brokenness has already been conceived.