Afterthoughts

by David Gentiles

One of the results of connection with God is often a sense of heretofore unrealized willingness to step out and do something daring, or risky in following Jesus. We had two beautiful Journey stories early on as John Corbin in the early service and Jack Morton in the late service told about how personal connection with God took them to places that they never aniticipate they would go. The stories of Peter walking on the water, and Matthew (Levi...the person not the denim) walking away from his lucrative tax-collecting racket to follow Jesus, both were examples of individuals nudged by their relationship with Jesus to risk moving from the comfortable to the meaningful. Wendy Colonna and Chad Pope were there as guest music artists (even though they are faithful Journeyers) and in addition to singing and playing beautifully and powerfully, Wendy shared the  temptation to operate in fear when the money for the new album is not there and you need to proceed or the project will never get done, so you continue to play, and travel, and record, and step out of the boat. Early in the service we showed a delightful clip from an old roadrunner cartoon, where Wile E. Coyote reads a book entitled, "How to Hypnotize Someone to Walk Off a Cliff".  He gets the skill down pat, calls the roadrunner, works his magic and when the roadrunner appears he has a hand mirror that he holds up and the Wile E (of course) hypnotizes himself and walks off the cliff. Early in my life I thought that was what God was doing in this arena ... some trick magic to make us do something we wouldn't ordinarily do. What I have since discovered is, that the things we do because of our connection with God are all things that help us become who we were intended to be, or help others become who they were intended to be. We are being called to our true nature and our unique giftedness.

We concluded by meditating on a video slide show produced by Leslie Diamond using Ruthie Foster's song "Walk On" and asking what it is that God is calling us to boldly walk to, or boldly walk away from.

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