Bob Hamp

Having just returned from an amazing experience, I am growing aware at a much deeper level of the way we are made for connection.  If my life were all about tasks, I think I would go insane.  As John Eldredge regularly reminds us our lives are about adventure.  But for some reason this trip has made me starkly aware that our lives are made for adventure together. 

I enjoy my time alone.  I do not fear silence, or stillness.  Maybe if I had more of it I would, but I relish time by myself.  So this is not about a neurotic need to be validated by people.  I simply believe we were made for connectedness.  Something is inherently fulfilling about sharing.  In fact, as I thought about this trip.  Every step was deeply enriched by someone else’s role in the journey.

Preparation:

In getting ready for this trip, people asked me regularly, “Are you excited?”

In the busy-ness of my life, I was forgetting to be excited.  In fact, the adventure of a lifetime felt to me like another big chunk out of my schedule.  How could I fit this in, and, it was a stinking long airplane ride, and, was it really going to be worth my time?  Somehow I had this thing categorized in the wrong place in my heart.  Friends, without even trying kept urging me to think differently (wait…isn’t that my job?). 

Finally over breakfast one day, a friend told me that God was up to something in China, and I was likely to see Him move in great ways.  What was this stirring in my soul?  Oh yeah; desire.  I felt desire about this trip for the first time.  I wanted, or maybe even needed to be where the action was.  Thanks friend.  It was not good for me to be alone, I was thinking wrongly about my journey.  I finally had an appetite to go, but I had not come up with this alone.  I was stirred up by a friend.

Experience:

The trip began and I met up with my companions.  Day by day the adventure unfolded.  Each one brought something with them that I did not have.  A thought.  A way of seeing things.  A sense of God’s direction.  The next step when I was unsure.  Left to my own, what richness I would have missed out on.  The perspective, the wisdom, the urging of the others made my trip fuller, deeper.

But more than this.  As the adventure unfolded and God began to move, it was good that I was not alone.  The excited glance, the eye contact as God’s Spirit snuck up on us.  My companions as well as new friends, all shared experiences, many with only a glance and no words.  In some cases words were impossible, because of language barriers, but there was no mistaking the deep look in the eye that said, “the two of us are one on the same journey, thank you for sharing it with me.”  We were all together part of something bigger than any one of us.  And sharing it together made us more aware of this. Thanks Alan, Sabrina and Dave.

I also have new friends.  Some I will never see again, but their stories are now part of my story.  Others I am certain I will see again.  Not only have our stories merged, our destinies have as well.  And my destiny is richer because it is now no longer mine alone.  Some people I will see in heaven forever, because our paths crossed once on earth.  How cool is that? 

Sharing:

Now I am home.  The adventure is over.  Or is it?  Not at all, because I am living it again with the people with whom I live my life.  My wife, my kids, my friends, all listen to the stories.  The stories become richer again, because I share them.  Those who weren’t there, have their hearts stirred as they hear what God did.  Partly because He did stuff, and partly because it again reminds us that God still does stuff. 

Something about telling, completes the story.  I anticipated, and a friend stirred my heart.  I experienced, and friends shared the journey.  And now I tell the stories, and the look on friends faces makes it complete.  The re-telling is more than just re-living old things.  Something in the telling makes it whole, finished.  Like a radio, receiving is only a pre-cursor to the broadcast.  If we don’t tell the stories they are incomplete as they grow lifeless and dormant in our hearts.

Any time you think to yourself, “I can do this alone”, next ask yourself; why would you?  The statement “It is not good for man to be alone” is just another way to say, “Life rocks when you share it with others”