“WHEN I GROW UP, I WILL GO THERE”

In what is considered one of the best novels ever written, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad tells the story of a man who goes up the Congo River on behalf of a trading company. As the story begins, Conrad relates that this man had a passion for maps as a child. He would look at a particularly inviting place, put his finger on it, and say, “When I grow up, I will go there.”

Perhaps you have said a similar thing when faced with Christ’s call to be his disciple. In a sermon, Dan Meyer puts our reaction this way: “When I grow up I’ll go there. When I have more faith, I’ll go to these places Jesus is talking about. When I’m a little more convinced I might go there. When I don’t have all of these obligations, distractions, and complications I might go then. “

When Jesus calls us to be his disciples, though, he does not give us the option of waiting until we think we are ready to follow him to the difficult places to which he calls us. Consider these penetrating and well known words in Matthew 16:24-25: “Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Jesus spoke those words after a pair of dramatic moments with Simon Peter. First Peter makes his confession of Jesus as God’s Son after Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Then Jesus tells the apostles that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer and be killed and be raised on the third day. Peter challenges Jesus on this being his destiny and tells him, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” Peter was saying, I am not ready for that. Not until I grow up. Then I will go there. But Jesus responded, “Get behind me, Satan.”

Like Peter, we may not want to go to the places God has placed on the map in front of us. We think to ourselves, and may even say to God, “When I grow up, I might go there.” We fail to realize that it is only by going with God to those places on the map where we have never been that we actually grow up and live as his disciples.

In the Disney Pixar movie The Incredibles the middle-aged suburban dad has been living a routine life. He pulls into his driveway to find his neighborhood boy watching him. He asks the boy, “What are you waiting for?” The boy looks back at him, and says, “Something amazing.” The man responds wistfully, “Me too, kid, me too.”

Jesus calls us to something amazing when he says, “Come, follow me.” This is the most amazing invitation we will ever receive. We dare not wait until “we grow up,” but should say yes to it.