Range

RANGE is the distance between two different realities, the distance between your low point and your high point, the distance between two different experiences, the distance between your secure point and your fear point or your comfort point and your misery point,

My wife has a temperature range of 5 degrees..she's comfortable between 68 and 73 degrees. I accuse her of being the princess in "The Princess and the Pea". Remember how the princess slept on top of twenty mattresses but still felt the small pea under the bottom mattress thus proving her royalty? I am honored to live with royalty!

Now actually my wife has a huge range...she can go from doing the dirtiest work in the garden to hosting the fanciest of teas, can go from relating with the homeless to laughing with the professors and governors, go from changing a spare tire to writing a dissertation. So I honor my wife's real range.

RANGE is what I see in Jesus as I study his life in the gospels. From engaging lepers to engaging Pilate, from wilderness solitude to speaking to 8,000 or more, from the carpenter shop to the temple courts, from fasting to feasting, from partying with the tax collectors to the mount of transfiguration, from cuddling children to staring down the high priest, Jesus had RANGE.

I am working on my RANGE...
Range comes from being secure about who you are and knowing how "with you" God really is.

It stems from not being scared for discomfort and misery but also not fearing to embrace the best of life.

It comes from having nothing to prove and seeking to give more than receive.

It flows from wanting to push the limitations of both ends of the spectrum.

It comes from living in a learning posture.

It comes from experimentation and a love for stretching my current reality.

It flows from facing fears and pushing through.

I believe God wants to increase our range rather than reconfirm our comfort zones.

So being in the jungle with cannibals or speaking at Exponential at Saddleback Church OR
skiing a double black diamond run in British Columbia or serving the homeless on Skidrow OR
teaching 5 year olds in a Sunday School class or lecturing Denominational leaders OR
preaching in a mud hut in Ethiopia to preaching to white folks in Kansas...I want RANGE.