Escapes
”Far too many people choose to live in Egypt instead of by faith. They go to religion the way I go to a baseball game—to escape the muddle, to have everything clear, to find a good seat from which they can see the whole scene at a glance, evaluate everyone’s performance easily and see people get what they deserve. Moral box scores are carefully penciled in. Statistics are obsessively kept.
Many religious meetings are designed to meet just such desires. The world is reduced to what can be organized and regulated; every person is clearly labeled as being on your side or on the other side; there is never any doubt about what is good and what is bad. ”
- Eugene Peterson, Run With the Horses
The first movie I remember being captivated by was Breaking Away. The story of a young man trapped in a small town in Indiana who begins to dream of a world beyond his own through the lens of biking and the European world, where biking was king. He becomes a vicarious world traveler. Realizing that his mother kept an updated passport for years without a single stamp only strengthened his resolve.
About the time I saw the movie, I caught the one-hour summary of the three-week-long Tour de France on the “Wide World of Sports”. I was soon taking to the country roads outside my small Texas town, logging thousands of miles on my crappy Schwinn. I was escaping from the life I was experiencing in the only way I knew how.
While my father never traveled outside the US after his time in the service, he had a lifelong subscription to National Geographic. He also subscribed to Food & Wine magazine for decades even though I don’t think he ever experienced any of the food or places discussed there. I guess that was a bit like the unstamped passport from the mother in that biking film.
My car died as I was leaving college. When I finally started earning a real salary after I graduated from college, the first thing I got was a vehicle to get me to and from that job. The second thing I got was a Cannondale racing bike with Shimano components that I still have today. Outside of cars and homes, it may still be the most expensive thing I ever purchased…certainly in early 1990’s dollars.
As an adult, I embarked on a similar escape. I found that journeying with my faith allowed me to escape the challenges and monotony of my day-to-day life. I could huddle together with others that believed as I did and it felt safe. We knew who the good people were (us) and we could clearly identify those that weren’t (them). We had our own scoreboard and we were always winning.
The only problem was that this bred another form of discontent. A legalism of faith that didn’t reflect any of the healing, freedom, or grace that the faith was created to carry.
Escaping often doesn’t solve our problems, it is just a short hiatus or vacation from them.
Now the bike I ride is on a stand, it doesn’t really go anywhere. But it allows my mind to travel everywhere and it reminds me that true life is mostly found right here, in the day-to-day. Not in escaping, but stepping deeper into the glory and opportunity that every day and conversation holds. It is not an escaping from, but an adventure into the abundant life dripping from each moment.
Knowing that is changing every day of my personal and professional life.
Consider
How do you escape?
What are you getting away from?
What are you longing for that you aren’t finding?
What is right in front of you every day that you are missing out on?