"It’s interesting how you sometimes have to leave home before you can ask difficult questions, how the questions never come up in the room you grew up in, in the town in which you were born. It’s funny how you can’t ask difficult questions in a familiar place, how you have to stand back a few feet and see things in a new way before you realize that nothing that is happening to you is normal. The trouble with you and me is that we are used to what is happening to us. We grew into our lives like a kernel beneath the earth, never able to process the enigma of our composition."

From Donald Miller’s Through Painted Deserts

While we were in Thailand I bought a T-shirt from a "western" (do I have to keep putting that in quotation marks? Whenever I say western I mean western hemisphere or non-Asian.  From now I’m dropping the quotes) restuarant called So-jos (short for Sojourners). On the back of the shirt it says just three words, "Savor the Journey". I like this restaurant mostly because of the food, but also because a Christian man started and runs the restuarant AND because he chose this phrase as its logo.

I think I am learning more and more that the Christian experience is not an ending point or a starting point. It’s everything in-between. It’s the journey we take. In the past, I think I have put a lot of emphasis on the when/how a person "became a Christian" as if that process were static and an isolated point on a timeline. As I grow up in my faith a bit, I wonder if that way of thinking is a bit too simple. We are becoming like Christ, becoming Christian, daily as we walk the path he has before us.

I am not saying that there are no pivotal points in this walk. Obviously, there are. Obviously, some people can claim a day and hour when "they made the decision" to follow Him. But, we can’t see all that God was doing up to that point of decision-making and we can’t anticipate the greater understanding we receive (through grace) as his Spirit begins to reside in us. The spiritual landscape is just too broad to fully comprehend it in an hour or a day. We have to put hiking boots on and walk it.

At times, the hard part (for me anyway) has been consciously enjoying it–especially when the Walk gets grueling. I am learning to do this. I am learning to remember with Whom I am traveling. I am learning to see those who are hiking this trail with me and fully appreciate them. I am learning to roll the word "savor" over my tongue in quiet seconds.

But you have to leave home, don’t you? Donald Miller is my hero. I liked his quote I posted above where he talks about asking big questions. Whether your departure is literal (China) or figurative (stepping outside of your routine or way of thinking) you have to push the envelope and summit a peak sometimes. It gives you greater perspective, and it makes you realize that life is not normal. Call it amazing, suprising, absurd, or delightful; but never normal. There is no "business as usual" when God breathes and speaks. There can be savoring…