The Great Adventure

In his book, The Island of Lost Maps, author Miles Harvey shares a sentiment you might share:

In my 30s I spent a great deal of time at the Kopi [a travelers’ café in Chicago] whose walls were adorned with masks from Bali and shelves filled with guides to far-flung destinations. I was then the literary critic for Outside Magazine, a great job but one that was beginning to wear on my patience. You see, the books I read were about people who climbed Himalayan peaks, rode a bicycle all the way across Africa, sailed wooden boats across the Atlantic, or tracked into restricted areas of China. These tales of adventure filled my days and my imagination, and yet my own life was anything but adventurous. The interior of the Kopi coffee shop was ringed by clocks, each one showing the time in some distant locale, and as I watched the weeks ticking away in places like Timbuctu and Juno and Goa and Denpasar, I began to long for an adventure of my own.

Dan Meyer, minister in Oak Brook, IL, opens a sermon from Matthew 4:18-25 that he titled “The Great Adventure” quoting that passage. He then tells that Harvey felt he was acting like a character in a Joseph Conrad novel who said, “When I grow up I will go there.” Then Meyer states the idea of the sermon as: “When Jesus says, ‘Follow me’ it’s the most amazing invitation you will ever get. Say yes to it.”

The story of the four fishermen that Jesus called to follow him in Matthew 4 is about four men who went on a great adventure when Jesus said to them, “Come follow me. Matthew, the author of the Gospel of Matthew, also received the call to follow Jesus and joined that great adventure. Many others during the course of Jesus’ ministry on earth and since have also joined the adventure. Meyer says:

In other words, lots of people from all walks of life and places lay down their tools, get out of their vehicles, release some of their associations, and follow him…. These people from all these places were willing to get up and go after Jesus because they had seen with their own two eyes what Jesus could do with a life put into his hands. They had seen his transforming power.

How about you? Do you want to go on an adventure great than anything you can imagine? Do you want to say with Joseph Conrad “When I grow up I will go there?” Jesus can take you to the place on the map that will change your life.

You get there by following Jesus. That is what the New Testament calls discipleship. There is no better place to learn about it than in Matthew’s Gospel. So we will do just that in the coming months.