Adventures...and praying for “smoothness”

When given an opportunity to tell about something interesting that happened to them over a week end or even a long holiday break, my students often have trouble thinking of anything they deem worthy of recounting. Even if they traveled, they often don’t “see” much that’s new or stimulating to them.  pon returning from reunions with relatives, they usually can’t think of anything noteworthy they conversed about.

This is partly a function of “normalcy.” Good parents work hard at making their children’s lives as free from stress and distress as possible. Stable homes are not generally characterized by high drama. But “interesting” does not have to equal “traumatic” in order for our lives to be filled with meaning and edification. One observant eight-year-old recounted for me in some detail the scavenger hunt he participated in. It involved word play and clever clues, all of which he relished in the retelling. This is a young man who, rather than complaining that life is boring, took the hand that was dealt him and found pleasure in it. He then committed it to memory, so as to entertain and challenge others with the retelling of the story. This is a good use of the “adventures” God sends our ways.

It is a phenomenon of the “Pre-Polly” years (preschool through about age 6) that young children tend to see things with eyes of “wonder.” It is inevitable that as children mature, they are not quite as amazed by new experiences as they were in those more impressionable years. But we have also poisoned our culture with the vanity of  being “too cool to be impressed,” and it only takes a few times of being laughed at, or ignored, for the sensitive child to ”catch on” that his enthusiasms are a bit quirky to others. The goal then becomes to sublimate or deny them as much as possible.

But back to “normalcy.” We are all conflicted over this. We want it…and we don’t. I remember the first time I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. When Lucy got safely back to the spare room following her first visit to Narnia, part of me wanted her to stay in England and not go back…to unknown places where there are witches! I knew there would be trouble! And we like things to be safe.

Of course, she did go back, and the events which troubled her return became one of my favorite stories of all times. I came to understand that while adventures are not completely “safe,” they are worthwhile when Aslan is there to guide and interpret for us. And in each succeeding book in the series, the children are constantly getting themselves into hot water (read: “dangerous adventures”). And over and over they encourage each other to face up to the adventure thaty Aslan has sent.

In the thousands of prayers I have prayed in the course of teaching in Christian schools, I have oft repeated the phrase, “Father we thank you for the adventure you have chosen for us.” It is my intentional contrast to the common phrase I hear in the prayers of both adults and children: “Help everything to go smoothly.” While I understand that this is the normally desirable state of affairs, I also realize that it is not always in God’s design for things go as “smoothly” (in human terms) as we believe to be necessary.

A more Biblical way to pray would be to say “May you be glorified in…” the event that we hope will go “smoothly.” In general, we need to pray that we would be faithful, that God would be honored, and that we would grow in grace through the adventure that Aslan has designed for us. Thank God, things often go “smoothly”! Our psyches could not take a steady diet of ”adventures.” But when adventures do come, we must be emotionally and spiritually prepared not just to accept them, but to profit from them.