No, not that kind of engaged.
I’m talking about being fully alive, “fully engaged, and full of integrity.” The opposite of tuning out or checking out. And I’m convicted by a scenario from my childhood.
You see, I spent hours and hours in a car, on the road, with my family. By the time I was eight, I’d already crossed the entire United States repeatedly, east to west. I’d seen the Grand Canyon, been amazed by snow in Yosemite, walked a cat on the salt flats of Utah, and lived in a tiny house by a creek in the Catskill mountains.
Not all our travels were so varied. Eventually we graduated to a van, and — well, have you ever traveled with four sisters and three brothers? On a much-traveled track between home and summer camp? Sometimes we sang, sometimes we stopped for picnics. Sometimes we read aloud. But much of the time, I used my superpower and tuned completely out, burying myself in a book, which meant escaping to another world. And that was okay.
But something happened as I grew, and as I saw more brand new places. I stared out the window on my way to Nova Scotia, and I saw the tawny, lion-colored grass, the wild irises in the swamps, the wind-wizened apple trees. I cried over the approaching horizon of Israel from my tiny pane of glass. I scanned the high, green hills of Gilead from our bus, knowing I might never be in Jordan again. I didn’t miss the chocolate-dark dirt of fields in rural Sweden, or the rows of giant windmills turning lazily in the breeze. I was startled by Windsor Castle appearing postcard-like on the horizon, while simply riding down a highway in England.
But I’m still tuning out. Oh yes, this life stage has gotten old. I know its contours, I’ve already experienced its joys, and now I’m tired of its sameness. Hope hurts too much. Bold faith is bewildering and exhausting. So I’ve got my nose pressed firmly in a book (figuratively and sometimes literally speaking), and I’m just marking time until I hear the van downshift, and feel it pull gently into the driveway — and I’ll open the door, and rush up the path, and I’ll be home at last. Oh, home.
Can you see anything wrong with this picture?
I can: there’s someone with me on this journey, and it’s Jesus. Tuning out the scenery means tuning Him out too.
“Don’t let your longing slay the appetite of your living,” Jim Elliot wrote to Elisabeth, long before they were engaged. He was in Ecuador. She was at home, yearning to experience the adventure with him. Wise man, he said, “Live to the hilt every situation which you believe to be the will of God for you.”
Stay awake. Look out the window. Enjoy the company. This journey may seem interminable, but it’s not. Change is certain; this season will end. And there will be moments, strange to say, when these will be “the good old days.” When you will look back, perhaps, with regret over some opportunity open to you now, which will no longer be open to you in your longed-for future.
God tells us to “remember the whole way” He led us — on a pleasure trip, the highlight of our lives? No, that trek through the wilderness: take note of that trail. Know its effect on your heart; see what it reveals about your Guide.
Now is when I can learn what God is teaching me here. Now is when I can pray the specific prayers it will someday be His glory to answer. Now is when I’ve got my seat right where I can watch His plan unfold.
I am with Him, here, today.
Elisabeth Adams 