The Accidental Tourist
There is a couple in our church, Paul and Debbie Willis, who have been leaders since the very beginning of the ministry and great friends to Wendy and me. A few years into the church, we all decided to take a vacation together. Neither of us had any children yet, so we had the luxury of going anywhere we wanted, for any length of time, without needing extensive planning. First, we rented a motor home and then we came up with the brilliant idea of just packing our bags and going wherever the spirit led us. We had no plan; we just turned the key and started driving . . . It was a terrible idea!
After the first miles of “Where do you want to go?” and “I don’t know, where do
you
want to go?” we chose to drive to the coast. That took about three hours, and we stood and looked at the Pacific Ocean. Many of you probably have not been to the coast of western Washington; let’s just say it’s not nearly as magnificent as it can be hundreds of miles south. There are barely any waves, and when the tide is out, there can be a thick stench. Needless to say, it was a bit anticlimactic.
We grabbed a quick bite and then decided to take our haphazard adventure north. What if we drove to the farthest northwestern tip of the continental United States? Surely there must be a monument of Lewis and Clark or historic totem poles or something of the sort, right? So we began our trip to a place called Cape Flattery, near Neah Bay. We drove and we drove. As we did, the towns slowly began to shrink in size, and the roads began to shrink in size, until we found ourselves on an old, gravel logging road. One would think we would have turned around at that point, but we didn’t have a vision to go anywhere else, so we thought we might as well keep going the way we were already going.
After a very long time of swerving to miss enormous potholes and dust invading every nook and cranny of the motor home, we finally realized that there was nothing to see! We had devoted all day and much of the night to driving, had to set up camp along that dark and desolate logging road, and it was all for nothing! Granted, we did have nice talks and about a million rounds of cards, not to mention a charming night spent in the parking lot of Dairy Queen on the way home. But this adventure certainly did not go down in our books as one of our favorite vacations. Because none of us had a clear plan for this trip, we got exactly what we envisioned: nothing. In that amount of time we could have driven to see the amazing sights and mountains of the Northwest, or we could have taken a trip to Disneyland, but instead, we had nothing to show for our journey. Our eyes were dim, and so was our vacation.
Many of us live our lives this way: just going with the flow and allowing life to happen to us. The visions we have for our lives are “accidental.” We did not develop them on purpose; they just happened as a result of the circumstances we faced and the lifestyle in which we were raised. As a result, we have thoughts in the back of our minds of what we believe our future will be. We may not even be aware of all those thoughts, but they exist in our hearts and minds nonetheless. If we grew up in a home with happy parents and a prosperous life, our accidental vision is generally one of success and happiness, and we will naturally move toward that kind of life, but if we grew up in a home of divorce, or abuse, or poverty, our accidental vision is generally one that reflects that environment. While we may not want what our parents had, and we may not purposefully try to recreate the same experiences, if it’s the only vision we have in our hearts, then we will inevitably move toward that kind of life.
Many of us live our lives this way: just going with the flow and allowing life to happen to us. The visions we have for our lives are “accidental.”
The vision for your life encompasses so many areas. If the only examples you have of growing old are of people being very sickly for years and needing around-the-clock care, then unless you have diligently chosen to build new thoughts inside your heart, your accidental vision for aging is probably not very positive. Similarly, if the authority figures in your life were abusive and controlling, if you have not purposed to change your perspective about what you think is “normal,” then you will naturally gravitate toward these kinds of relationships. If you grew up in a transient home, moving every few years, then unless you work to change your vision about relationships, you might find it difficult to establish long-term friends. Whatever the case may be, if you are not actively working to create the vision you truly want for your life, you will simply by accident reproduce the life and the environment you were raised in.
It is God’s will, His
gift,
for us to establish our purpose in life, to get a detailed vision for our future, and to go for His abundant blessings. We were created in His likeness and His image, and we have the incredible ability to choose what we want for our lives and make it come to pass. Your eye is the lamp of your body, and what you see for your future is what you will get. Let’s take an honest look at the vision we have in our hearts. Let’s thank God for the areas in which we are experiencing happiness and success, and let’s go about changing those areas in which we are not. Jesus promised all of us in John 10:10, “I have come that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows)” (AMP). Let’s not settle for anything less than this kind of life! Let’s establish our lives with amazing and exciting vision.