Course Charting: The Deep
Bridges are important and some bridges are beautiful, but they are only a very small part of the journey. I’ve lingered midway across many a footbridge to peer over the side and take in the view of a river or valley below. It’s a perspective you just can’t get from either side or down below. But I’ve never considered staying there. Bridges exist only to get us from one place to another.
My vision of the bridge is a marker on my spiritual journey. It represents the beautiful, yet irreversible, passage from the old to the new. As a Christian, I would come to know it by a different word–salvation. When I crossed my bridge, I wasn’t just curious to see what was on the other side. I crossed in order to become a real follower of Jesus. No more investigation from a distance. No more half-hearted trial runs. Crossing meant I was all in with my Lord. What’s more, I quickly discovered that He intended to take me away from that bridge. As beautiful as it was, the bridge was never meant to be a permanent dwelling place. Following Jesus meant following Him into the deep.
In one sense, the deep is the same for every Christian. To put it plainly, it means getting to know Jesus, growing more deeply in love with Him, becoming more devoted to Him, learning His ways, and submitting more and more of one’s life until there is nothing left to submit. But in another sense, the deep is as different as the individual.
For me, following Jesus into the deep meant literally following Him into the deep–the Deep South. I don’t know, maybe He wanted to put some actual space between my old and new life. Maybe He wanted to shake me up a bit. Or maybe it was just His very cool, and sometimes humorous, way of getting me outside of my comfort zone so that I would have to depend more upon Him. For reasons I could never have predicted, I ended up in Charleston, South Carolina at a school called The Baptist College at Charleston. To illustrate just how deep this was for me, I had no idea South Carolina was a coastal state until I looked it up on the map when I knew I was going there. Until then, my life was west (California and Nevada) and north (Alaska). South and east existed only in the movies and that part of history class dealing with the Civil War. The purpose of this Course Charting exercise prohibits me from providing a full account of my southern exposure. Suffice it to say that my new friends took great pleasure in teaching me the words and ways of southern-ness. It proved to be an education all around. For I was as strange to them as they were to me.
I entered the south in the summer of 1985. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but I guess I figured I’d end up back in the west sooner or later. I was wrong. God used two very important things to keep me southern bound. I’m married to one of them. The other was an unexpected gift that looked and sounded strangely familiar.
(Next Blog: Old Passions, New Purposes)
