Its 5:30 am and I’m sitting in the Philly airport anxiously waiting- at least as anxious as someone can be in this half-conscious sleep-deprived state I’m in- for my flight to board. The problem is that I still have an hour and a half to wait… 
The past week has become a blur of sugar-enhanced teenagers and lonely elderly desperately seeking the affection and company of one another. I know for some of the kids they think the people they’re serving are weird or different but deep down God has given us the longing for human interaction with not only our peers in time and culture but also with those who, like a good book, have withstood the test of time and with those we only read books about…
Could I really be sitting here getting ready for training camp? Is this the little artsy title page some authors put in their books at the beginning of each chapter informing me that, yes, I am actually going to be going on the world race at the end of September? It still isn’t reality. Other than a brief rendezvous with my teammate Angi I can’t say I believe this is all happening. Even as I sit here in a daze by myself in gate f28 urgently awaiting my teammate Cindy to show up I can’t help but see the future as merely an open ended book. I don’t even need to close my eyes to picture scenes from “The Pagemaster” (Macaulay Culkin) imagining my life like a book that God is writing, pages flying everywhere. And all these possibilities are just lingering around waiting for God to take hold. The 
author of life could throw dragons and serpents in front of me and I could become some knight in shining armor battling off these creatures and events in life, or He could make it some tragic non-fiction of sadness and grief. I could end up becoming a world traveler, enjoying the lifestyle of a world racer and gaining more and more passion for the broken-hearted around this rock. Or I could lose perspective on the world church and become fed up with living out of a backpack and end up with the homeless in Seattle searching for the next great opportunity for love and community…
Have you ever heard the saying “God laughs when someone makes plans?” Some people say this but don’t really believe it. I have almost made it my inner motto. People ask me what I’m doing next and I can’t give them any truth but a shrug of the shoulders. We try to control time as if it’s a little puppy we’re trying to potty train. But ultimately we have no power over this beast because it is a part of how God designed this world and this people. We’re told by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:34 that tomorrow has worries of it’s own. But does He bother to tell us what those troubles may be (yes, at times, but work with me here…)? There are infinite variables, shifting and churning destroying any expectations we may have for the future. We cannot take into account what will happen tomorrow because we don’t know what other people are going to do or what God is going to do. The safest (or unsafest, depending on how you look at it) thing to do is just to look to our Father for guidance and follow Him wherever and whenever He may take us. We are floating pages waiting to be put into His book and this adventure we’re taking could not get more exciting, whether you’re sitting behind a desk or travelling the road. You can’t predict what will happen in the next 5 minutes and that should be enough to get you psyched about what God can do with you…
