"The Rash Absurdities of the Redeemed"

Sometimes a certain line stops you in your tracks as you're reading. For me, this morning, it was this, from Luci Shaw:

"And here we are, day by day attempting the utterly impossible. We are called to perform the rash absurdities of the redeemed or to expire miserably."

That's from her book Breath for the Bones, meditations on art and faith. I pick it up occasionally and dive in, and sometimes I am rewarded with thought-provoking moments like that one.

Still pondering it. It sounds like "perform or perish" but I think it's really more of a "sink or swim." The performance part isn't tied to our ability to do, but our willingness to trust. I think she's saying that we either enter into the radical, free-fall, adventure life of the gospel -- which some days seems perilous -- or we will find ourselves in real peril, the sort of fish gasping out of water peril. There's the danger of adventure well entered into, with the proper guide and rescuer, and there's the danger of a life not entered into or lived at all. The life of the redeemed may look rash or even absurd, but when viewed next to the sadness and emptiness (and real peril) of an unredeemed life, those rash absurdities take on a holy sanity.