Oxygen

“To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness; it should rather be an expression of breathless expectation.”

Oswald Chambers

Walter Mitty has lived such an uninteresting life that his E-harmony rep, Todd Maher, feels sorry for him.  In trying to beef up his profile, they quickly came to the conclusion that not only isn’t there anything “noteworthy or mentionable” about Walter, but he hasn’t really been anywhere “noteworthy or mentionable” either.  

But if you have seen the movie, you know that a few simple decisions take Walter on a life-changing adventure.  Walter finds himself swimming with a shark, surviving frigid waters, escaping volcanic eruptions, and climbing high mountain peaks.  The movie’s trailer is one of the more invigorating ones I have seen in years.

At one point, as he is crossing a mountain range, his old friend (Todd) from E-harmony gives him a call.  To Todd’s delight, Walter starts to retrace his steps from his epic adventure.  And then he says something really interesting…

“Hey Todd, I'm gonna keep this short. I have to make oxygen choices.”

In other words, “I am living a life of such adventure and altitude, that I literally have to decide how I am going to allocate my breath.”  The guy who had nothing noteworthy or mentionable about his life and whose closest friend was the E-harmony guy who pitied him, has to make tough choices about how big a story he is going to live.

I was recently talking to a friend of mine in the Pacific Northwest.  We were sharing our relative states of overwhelm.  And then we both stopped and took stock of what we were overwhelmed about.  

We decided that if you had told either of us that we would be…

- doing all the things we are doing, 

- getting invited into all the things we are, 

- or participating in the work of God in the way that we are…

...we would never have believed you.

We are both finding the unique role we were created to play in the larger story of God.  We talked about the need to pinch ourselves to make sure that all we were seeing and experiencing was real.  And despite the fact that we have counted the cost and are continuing to do so, we wouldn’t reverse the trades we’ve made to get to this place.

The opportunities being presented to us are literally more than we can handle or could have imagined were possible.

Like Walter Mitty, we are having to make oxygen choices.

If we go back to our cubicle life of disappointment (where there were no oxygen choices to be made) we mostly sat around trying not to settle for the most boring of our many uninspired options.  Those choices really didn’t have consequences like the ones we are making now.

But agreeing with what God is doing, how He is doing it, and taking your place in that larger story, has huge implications….glorious, beautiful, and breathtaking ones.

Why would you make any other oxygen choice?

• Are your days filled with breathless expectation?
• Is your life filled with a multitude of beautiful options?
• Are you have to make oxygen choices?
• What is keeping you from living that kind of life?