So I've finally started reading this amazing book called "In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day." It's based off a passage in Scripture many of us have glanced at but never paid much attention to from 2 Samuel 23. It's about a warrior named Benaiah and it says of him, "he chased a lion down into a pit. Then, despite the snow and slippery ground, he caught the lion and killed it." The book talks about how our fears get in the way of real life - the life God wants for us.

I was immediately struck with a great thought in chapter one. We tend to think of "holiness" in terms of subtracting something from our lives that shouldn't be there...which is certainly part of it. But as Mark Batterson writes in the book, "...I think God is more concerned about sins of ommision--those things we could have and should have done...Goodness is not the absence of badness. You can do nothing wrong and still do nothing right...Is anybody else tired of reactive Christianity that is known more for what it's against than what it's for? We've become far too defensive. We've become far too passive. Lion-chasers are proactive. They know that playing it safe is risky. Maybe we've measured spirutual maturity the wrong way. Maybe following Christ isn't supposed to be as safe or as civilized as we've been led to believe. Maybe Christ was more dangerous that our Sunday-school flannelgraphs portrayed."

How true. How sad.

How exciting!