Faith and Risk

I was reading a book on creativity (Julia Cameron’s “Vein of Gold”).

I have been hunting and pecking at this book, of the series it is admittedly not my favorite – but it still has nuggets of information.

One such nugget came under the chapter “Courage.”

The chapter was dealing with the courage to embark on creative endeavor, especially when we do not know the outcome. Such as writing a book and not knowing if it will ever be published.

We tend to wait until we are comfortable and “sure” before we attempt to do something that will take up a good part of our time and energy…feeling of course that if it doesn’t pan out the way we want it to, we have wasted our time.

Julia went on to say: “without the freedom to fail real creative success is impossible. The work that avoids failure, avoids risk, and safe work is dull by definition.”

It dawned on me: this too, works with faith.

The faith that avoids failure, stumbling, hurt, etc. avoids risk…and “safe” faith, is dull faith.

If it’s new to us, it might be exciting at first…as all new things usually are, but then it becomes comfortable and safe.

Safe is comforting, but it also runs the risk of becoming boring.

Sure, we need our safety and comfort from time to time, but if our faith is to grow, to increase, to get closer to God, we need to step out of that safe zone…

We need to take a risk of faith…