No Fixed Land

As you can see (assuming you've visited before), I have renamed and to some degree redesigned my blog. Why, you may ask? Mostly because I see this recent move across the country as opening the next epoch of my life, and I wanted my blog (the place wherein I narcissistically muse about said life) to reflect that sense of newness. That, and I've been dying to re-create the header anyway, because I thought the old one was rather ugly.

So, the new name. No Fixed Land.

The name is part of a quote from Perelandra, the second book in C.S. Lewis' excellent space trilogy:

"He gave me no assurance. No fixed land. Always one must throw oneself into the wave."

This is one of my favorite images in literature.* With the context of the book around it, this statement is a beautiful expression of faith. It is not saying that God does not offer us assurance, but that the assurance is Him, Himself; not the land we stand upon, or the securities we create for ourselves. It is our frightening, glorious privilege to plunge ourselves into each wave as He brings it to us.

Life is nothing if not an adventure. I am not where I expected to be right now. I have no idea "what I'm doing with my life," or what next month or next year will look like. The last few years have included a lot of confusion and even disappointment about what I'm being called to do. I still wonder all the time why I'm who I am, when I am, where I am.

But that's okay. No fear. By the grace of God, I know I can confidently throw myself into this next wave, wherever it takes me. I mean, it's His wave, hey? So it's good. Sweetly exhilarating sometimes, swift and buffeting sometimes, seeming to languish in a dead calm sometimes, but always His. So always Good.

Bring it on.

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*So, I highly recommend that you read this book and encounter this image in its full context. But in brief: The protagonist finds himself in an unfallen world where the "land" is essentially matted vegetation resting on top of the sea, which conforms to the movement and ever-changing contours of the water. There is only one "fixed land"--one solid land of rock--and it is used throughout the book to represent our human desire to have things in life "fixed": certain and secure and predictable. Among other things, the story presents a picture of our need to let that prideful, fearful, self-insurance go and to throw ourselves into the unpredictability (yet ultimate goodness and security) of God's will. Really, you should read it. It's that good.