God Over Good By Luke NorsworthySample

Day Three: All or Nothing Jesus said that if you want to save your life, you must lose it. Spirituality is about letting go, but spirituality cannot start with letting go, because we can’t give away what we don’t possess. Spirituality begins with constructing what will eventually be cast aside, like training wheels on a child’s bicycle. What we start with on our spiritual journey has a valuable purpose, but it cannot stay forever. We begin life with the chaotic waters crashing near our feet. The invitation into the mystery persists despite our best attempts to keep God in our well-defined boxes, because we can’t keep the all-present God out. The “stay on the shore” impulse confuses curiosity about God with unfaithfulness to God, because the main goal is to stay dry. Once in the water, we repeat what worked before, but we realize we can’t go back. It’s sink or swim here. Far too many can’t swim because they have domino faith. When I was a kid, our family used to play dominoes, though my interest centered on what I got to do with the dominoes after the game concluded. Scores tallied, victor proclaimed, and the table emptied, I had some real fun with the dominoes. I would develop elaborate lines, stacking them, spiraling them, and staircasing them all over the table, all the while evading the destructive force of my older brother, who finds no greater joy in life than seeing people suffer, specifically his younger sibling. All he would need to do was bump one domino, then one by one all would come crashing down. One domino’s downfall equaled the destruction of all the dominoes, which for too many people describes the structure that sustains their view of the divine. Unlike the apostle Paul, who could see that some beliefs and expectations were of first importance, they see them all equally. When we enter the water, we initially try to get back to shore, to the way things used to be. If we are wise, we stop fighting the water and accept it as that which keeps us afloat. We acknowledge that the water isn’t destroying water; it’s living water. God, help me be willing to leave shore in my understanding of you, trusting that you will bring new life as I let go of my assumptions about who you are.