God's Fool

I've been feeling sorry for myself, but I realize this:

God has invited me on an adventure.  His hand is warm around mine, lifting me from the Games of life, tugging me free. I get to follow Him into unfathomable uncharted waters, unprotected by the structure of college or even a career, I am free, I am young, I am an eternal soul cherished by my Creator. All my Potential glitters like forbidden fruit among the trees, as sweet as apricots, as heady as wine, but Potential is worthless. All the Great Things in the world are useless without my beautiful wild fearsome compassionate Jesus.

I am honored by His invitation. I am blessed, surprised, astonished by his call. Like the day I was accepted to University of Iowa's Young Writers' Studio, screaming and leaping and sparkly and shocked. Only bigger. This isn't a light inclination, this is a vocation, this is good because it is a dance with Love. The purity, the holiness, the gleaming majesty of my Lord is the only adventure worth tackling.

I've been feeling sulky and deprived, but I chose this. God spoke it over me, but I am the one who swallowed his words and clapped for joy, and I can choose to clap again. I do choose to clap again.

I am willing to be His fool. To do the most useless, career-wreaking, silly things just to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. To be the nutcase dancing to music no one else can hear, the wild child bathing in a sun no one else can see.

Today a friend was trying to remember a word that meant "one that doesn't match," and he stumbled upon the phrase, "the outrageous child." In lemons, apples, and moonlight, moonlight is the outrageous child.  I thought that was beautiful.

Maybe I was called to be an outrageous child. In the world, but not of the world. God's outrageous fool.

And maybe that is beautiful.

Don't fool yourself. Don't think that you can be wise merely by being up-to-date with the times. Be God's fool—that's the path to true wisdom. What the world calls smart, God calls stupid. 

1 Corinthians 3:18-20, The Message translation