Make the Move, Live the Dream

by Ryan Harmon, Pastor to Young Adults

The current issue of Outside Magazine is one they always run about this time of the year and it always gets to me. “Where to Live Now: The 20 Best Towns in America. MAKE THE MOVE, LIVE THE DREAM.”

Just in case any of you were wondering, Lincoln didn’t make the list and I know that comes as a shock to everyone.

I’m always fascinated to see my reaction to magazines like this — how quickly discontentment overtakes me and overshadows the more rational responses to an article like this. I wish I found myself asking who it is that has the authority to tell me what the “best” towns are or even, on a more fundamental level, what makes a place a “best” town. Instead, I buy in immediately and begin to think about all the things these other towns offer me. How silly is that: towns offering me something? Could it be that a simple move to one of these towns can help me finally “live the dream?” Whose dream I’ll be living will be a mystery until I get there I guess.

The editors at Outside aren’t stupid; they know what’s going to help magazines sell, and a quick scan of the magazines and advertisements aimed at twenty-somethings gives us some insight into the most pursued commodity of the day: Experiences. Youth culture loves them and the more you have the better off you are. White picket fences, 2.5 kids, and six-figure salaries are no longer the envy of college grads everywhere. Instead, it’s zero commitments, eclectic living, and innumerable experiences that define the wealthy and blessed of our day.

Outside Magazine knows this, that’s why your town stinks — it limits you.

I’ve been thinking about all of this in light of Bryan’s message on the 70th Psalm. He said a few times that you can’t get the exclamations of God’s greatness that come in verse 4 unless you have the on-the-edge, risky, “if God oversleeps then I’m toast” type of living that is described in verses 1 & 5.

He went on to talk of how it is so easy for us to slide to the “mushy middle” of comfortable Christianity. This is unquestionably true. The question I’ve been facing, however, is what my “mushy middle” is? For my parents who are empty nesters, the mushy middle might be staying in Lincoln and maintaining their comfortable existence. This could be the mushy middle for twenty-somethings as well. However, I don’t know that this is the case for most of us in our twenties.

I wonder whether for many of us twenty-somethings, the riskiest thing we could do, the thing that would drive us to cry out to God “I am poor and needy” and “hasten to help me,” would be to plant roots right where we are. To commit. To invest in something other than a new and hip experience. Living on the edge is good if it is with God, but for those of us living in a generation where edgy living is on par with owning the latest iPod or being on the front lines of the latest fashion trends, it could be that the riskiest and most ludicrous thing we could do would be to dig deep where we are now.

Maybe our commitment and investment to life here and now with God, rather than our focused longing on what else we could experience that might impress people, would be our greatest witness to our generation. Before long I think we’d all find that in light of the depth and richness of relationships that would result it onto a list of “bests” is actually colossally unimportant.