There are basically two ways to ride a roller coaster. The first is to resist the ride. You can press your feet against the floorboard and arch your back. You can grip the handle bar so hard your knuckles turn white. You can tense your jaw, tighten your abdominal muscles, and scream bloody murder as you descend the precipitous drops and are flung around the death-defying turns.
Somewhere in my rather limited experience of roller coasters, I discovered a second approach. You can actually relax on a roller coaster. Really! You can loosen your grip on the bar, relax your jaw, legs and abdominal muscles. In fact, you can take a roller coaster ride in the same physical condition and mental state of a couch potato.
Obviously, your physical state will have no influence on the roller coaster. No matter how tense or relaxed you may be, the roller coaster will not alter its route one inch or adjust its speed one iota. Either way, you will be delivered to the platform on time and in one piece. You cannot control the ride, you can only control the rider.
In a manner of speaking, this illustrates the way faith operates in the life of the believer. Like a roller coaster, life often takes us on a wild ride at speeds we are not sure we can handle and around turns and down precipitous valleys that seem to spell certain disaster. But choosing to place my faith in God, I can relax. I can rest in the realization that no amount of resistance or anxiety on my part will alter the course, but that he will sustain and uphold me as I hurl down the track of life. There are times the course seems too steep, too fast, too scary, but I can trust that God has designed the course and will get me safely to the celestial platform in one piece. And in this confidence I can rest.
No dream
The idea is not that through a process of mental gymnastics I convince myself that life is nothing but a dream—a gentle stream along which I merrily row my boat. To the contrary, I have a moral responsibility to participate in, and to fully enjoy the ride as it really is. The wind screams through my hair and the g-forces flatten my face. The turns and descents are often unpredictable. I am jostled about. I take it as a roller coaster ride because that is what it is.
Yet taking if for what it is, does not demand that I fight the ride. I can relax in the confidence that God has laid out the course and will convey me home. To say it another way, I can choose to live by faith.read more
