wants something different for us. His goal is never that we’ll come back
the same. He’s hoping we’ll return more dependent on Him. I’m not
saying everything needs to be risky in our lives, but we’d be well served
if a few more things were riskier in our faith. Loving people we don’t
understand or agree with is just the kind of beautiful, counterintuitive,
risky stuff people who are becoming love do.
Every day we get to decide if we’ll take it easy and fly over the
mountaintops in our relationships or make ourselves better and find our
way through the valleys. Heaven and a world full of hurting people are
hoping we will. The Bible talks about this. It says when our faith gets
tested, we have the chance to grow. This makes sense to me. Stated
differently, if we want our faith to get stronger, we need to navigate some
deep places.
It sounds simple on paper, but in real life it’s a lot tougher than it
looks. I’m a pretty upbeat guy, and while I’m willing to go through a
valley or two, I don’t aim for them the way those fighter pilots did. The
truth is, I only reluctantly go through difficult times or deal with difficult
people. When I do, I’m quick to complain to myself about what a raw
deal I got and how unfair it is for such a nice guy like me to have such
hard things happen or have to deal with such difficult people. People who
are becoming love understand God guides us into uncomfortable places
because He knows most of us are too afraid to seek them out ourselves. It
happens to me all the time, and I usually only recognize in hindsight that
the hard places I’ve navigated helped me steer a more purposeful course
forward. This has been God’s idea for us all along.
When I finished the event in Palm Springs, it was late in the evening,
around ten o’clock. I drove back to the local airport and readied my plane
for takeoff. The F- 16 was gone, and I imagined those guys were going
Mach 5 through a nearby valley, getting better, testing their skills, and