You want to do WHAT?

   Our culture has this strange divide between the things you like to do and the things you do all day to make money.  When you're my age, the pervasive question "What are you going to be when you grow up?" is loaded with "How are you going to keep yourself off the street?"  Stability has one accepted form these days and its green with an old guy stamped in the middle. 

  Of course, this is not the image we give little kids to describe the career world, no we tell them they can be anything!  Do you want to be a fire-fighter, little Johnny?  Or how about a first-baseman for the Yankees?  How sweet!  The kids like me who were told in grade-school that they could grow up to be astronauts or the president are now careening off the edge of indecision.  We want to live up to our dreams, but safe, wallet-friendly job choices largely come in prosaic categories.  The chute from education to vocation feels cramped by questions of salary scale and benefits.

  And then, in a moment of fate, my husband dumped over all his medical aspirations and announced, "I want to be a farmer!"  Me of course, drinking the kool-aid of stability-worship, immediately threw a fit.  As far as I was concerned, Justin could be anything he wanted...as long as our income wouldn't be trampled by sleet rain or wiped out by mad cow disease or anything.  At first I was deaf to Justin's romantic descriptions of pastoral simplicity, tasting the tangible profits of hard, physical work, and providing fresh, raw food for a CSA of lively idealists.  Then I took a good hard look at the way I perceived resources and where they come from.
 

We allow our dreams to become stifled by questions of money because we secretly believe that God is holding out on us.  We don't trust his provision because we feel like God will probably give us something we deserve, and we know we don't deserve much.  But God is not like that at all!  In Matthew 7:7-11 Jesus compares a parent's care for his child with God's gracious provision for us.  Even a hardened criminal can be compassionate towards his or her family, so how much greater is God's provision for even our smallest needs. He has shown himself to be God-for-us on the cross.  We have no reason to suspect that he will stingily withhold from us when he has already given all of himself.

So I'm open to participating in Justin's pursuit of sustainable agriculture.  In fact I'm excited!  Moving forward with a healthy amount of risk is making life thrilling and adventurous.  It is refreshing to be able to let go and begin something new.