Have you noticed that most car advertisements are rarely about the car? We see cars driving solo along picturesque highways that we may see once a year, on vacation – maybe. Or off-the-road vehicles in a jungle that is who knows where. Never have I seen a car commercial where the vehicle is stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Or creeping from red light to red light. But that is the kind of driving most of us do.
That’s because the manufacturers aren’t really selling us a car, they are selling us a vision of a lifestyle, and the car is cast as part of it. Considering all the money businesses spend on advertising that appeals to our sense of adventure, you would think most of us are daredevils, explorers and high-risk operators. But the truth is, as much as that swashbuckling attitude appeals to our imagination, we spend most of our energy trying to keep things stable, trying to make what we have secure and resisting anything different that threatens the status quo.
But “different” is often where the growth comes from. A different job. A different relationship. A different situation. A different health diagnoses. But we don’t have to buy a car or manufacture these different experiences. All we have to do is to keep living the life we have and open our hearts, minds and spirits to the different ways the Lord is leading us to process the various changes that show up each day. There is enough adventure in the life you have if you know how to look at it. As it is written, “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland” (Isaiah 43:19).
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