A changing risk

I made some rash promise back in the last post to investigate 'change'. Now I have to backtrack and regurgiate some thoughts from Sunday and guess what, it's Tuesday! My memory is not that good. Anyway as I'm a dilligent brain on a body, I take notes during the sermon (to be really truthful it's only because I can't concentrate very well any other way). The problem was this week I don't think I added any extra Bec thoughts to the steady stream of Rob's - I just thought them. How typical. So I might just have to rethink them. It's 11:30 already, so we'll just have to see how it pans out. Change. Definitely not a foreign topic. Love it, hate it. Know it back to front. Aside from the 'patience' dilema, change has probably been the biggest pain in the butt to date. I hope I've made some kind of peace with the thing because I am certainly of the opinion that it can only be good for us, as well as right and even Godly (in the correct context). I do not particularly wish to restate my whole life history (critical incidents part 2 might give some insight and this past post on change) but change plays a pretty violent part in most mk's lives and at least has some kind of role in everyone elses. It did not surprise me too much on Sunday when the data projector threw up 'Safety and Uncertainty' and Rob commenced his spiel, considering that's a little of what the church is going through at the moment. I suppose what I really want to talk about here is not change but risk - which is what often needs to come when change is involved. As many of you might know, I'm not perhaps the biggest of risk takers particularly when it comes to things that might have some kind of painful aftereffect. I could psycho-analyse it back to various childhood incidents, but for the sake of not boring either of us I wont - nor would it be useful and would probably sound like a big fat collection of excuses. Not to entirely box myself as a self-coddled individual - I've probably come in leaps and bounds since I started realising you do have to act in order to provoke, grow and move with change. I've taken more risks than I would've liked the past few years. Familiarity is a word that I guess associates itself quite well with both change and risk. I think the difference is that we probably have less control over change and far more over risk. There is a definite proactivity about risk. The proactive nature of it all is quite a call when you look at it from the God angle. Risk involves exercising some kind of courage - which means there has to be fear there (however deeply buried) or it would not be courageous and hence there's got to be trust. Be it hopefully in God. I am entirely thinking outloud but if we let risk play a part in our lives as Christians, surely this is a way of living as God wants us to, an act of worship even. Dependance upon God is a way of acknowledging his utimate control. Despite the thoroughly cliched nature of Psalm 23 - I happen to like it excessively and as it sits on the bottom of my cupboard door I can read it (Message version) from my bed. I like it as much for what it says about God as for the typical reassurance means. The non-risk taking part of me still often gets over-ruled by the 'I like a challenge' part of me. Yes, I'm a walking contradiction. So the challenge I think God's been trying to get through to me lately is to allow a bit more of the risk element in. Challenge lets me stretch myself a bit, but still probably resides somewhat in control. Then again perhaps it's all the same thing? Whatever the case, Saftey doesn't get you very far. I don't think we were made to live particularly 'safe' lives. I don't think we can call ourselves Christians and be passive, cling to 'the promises of God' and 'never do anything' people. I don't think we can be too settled, or too complacent. Our home is with God yes, we do need to sometimes, "Be still and know", but it's going to be a lot harder to know God when things never alter, when we never find the need for Him. A beautiful balance of revelling in what we know of God and a decent kick up the but to actually live like we know who God is with the life we've been given. Psalm 84 speaks fairly decently about trust. Go and read it. It's been late night ramble and I'm not even sure if it came to any particular point. So I'm curious to hear from you if you have more thoughts on this.