Rocky Road Devotions: RISK

Friday, July 28, 2023

RISK

Friday, July 28, 2023

And why should we ourselves risk our lives hour by hour? For I swear, dear brothers and sisters, that I face death daily.

1 Corinthians 15:30-31a

Apostle Paul faced risks many of us would avoid like the plague. He did it so others might know of God’s Good News, the salvation message of Christ. Author Leo Buscaglia wrote about risk:

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool,

To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.

To reach out to another is to risk involvement,

To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.

To place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss.

To love is to risk not being loved in return,

To live is to risk dying,

To hope is to risk despair,

To try is to risk failure.

But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or live. Chained by his servitude he is a slave who has forfeited all freedom. Only a person who risks is free.[1]

People take all kinds of risks in life. There are risks abounding at the casinos in Las Vegas, mountains and valleys to be explored, and (as my daughter did on her 40^th birthday) planes to be jumped-out-of with nothing but a few pounds of silk and string to slow-down your fall.

Those fun and exciting adrenaline-rush risks are at one end of the spectrum of reasons why one would risk life and limb. At the other end of the risk-spectrum are more noble and substantive explanations why reasonable people put themselves in harm’s way.

· Firefighters run to the fire, while everyone else is running from the fire.

· Soldiers strap-on up to 120 pounds of Kevlar flak jacket, munitions, helmet and weapon when they face the risk of enemy fire.

· Line repair for the electricity that powers your toaster is done by risk-takers, 30-feet off the ground, daring 13,800 volts of power to behave itself.

· The list is endless.

The thin line of risk walked by Apostle Paul was life or death at the hands of those steeped in the kind of power human ego uses to oppress that which threatens their power. Before he met Jesus, Paul was one of those people. When he met Jesus his life was turned from oppressing the followers of Jesus, to fugitive-on-the-run to preach Christ’s love and hope. Those who pursued Paul had him falsely accused of sedition, imprisoned, and eventually executed…martyred.

Paul was (and is) a study in how to daily abandon self, and lay it all down for the Kingdom of God…or as Jesus put it: take up your cross daily, and follow me.[2] That is hardly suicidal…rather it is the invitation to let go of the old life of death, and be introduced to the Grand New Life which only Christ can give.

For You Today

In 1945, Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from a Nazi prison, just before facing Adolph Hitler’s hangman: When Christ calls a man, he bids him ‘Come and die’. That may seem a bit on the risky side…but it’s guaranteed by the blood of the only Son of the Creator and King of the Universe.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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