Stepping Out

I used to be quite addicted to a certain online role-playing computer game.  Judge all you want, but it was social, interactive, goal-oriented and a whole lot of fun.  I still miss it sometimes, really bad.  But I gave it up over a year ago after I came back from Africa because I realized it was unhealthy …it simply took too much of my time away from friends, family and life.  It just kept me in a holding pattern, not growing, not being productive, and certainly not God-glorifying.

But in that game, there were many things to do that took a certain amount of moxie for the unadventurous, even though it was “virtual”.  The first time I ever had to take my character underwater for an extended amount of time, for instance, I was literally sitting there gasping and hyperventilating in my unnatural fear of drowning. 

While sitting at my desk.

I remember once there was this bridge over a wide chasm.  A swinging bridge would have been bad enough (Think Donkey…I’m looking DOWN!) but this was even worse.  It was an invisible bridge.  It made me shake in my character’s plate steel boots just looking at it.  Or looking at where I imagined it to be.

Yes, sitting at my desk.

But for me, it was terrifying.  To get across required following someone else that had crossed it successfully before…someone that knew the way.  It also required a great deal of courage to step out onto nothing.  But it was sure rewarding to make it all the way across without plummeting to the ground below and look back and realize what I had been brave enough to do.

Even sitting at my desk.

The past little bit in real life I have been stepping out.

It’s scary.

When you face that first frightening step, there is always a choice.  You can stay where you are, and watch everyone else cross over without you.  You can decide to blast your way across alone and fall off.  You can crawl out a bit and get petrified halfway over and cling to dear life, refusing to go any further.  Or you can follow the One that you trust.  The One who has successfully crossed it before.  The One who shows us the way.

Isaiah 43:19 says “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

Stepping out often means doing a new thing.  It is scary, and sometimes we have to look down.  But if we believe and trust and follow, God makes a way for us, even when the path looks barren. 

Or invisible.