Adapt and improvise

"The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." John 3.8

It's a small thing really but, living in the wild west, you have to be flexible. The weather determines how and when activities can take place. Everything boils down to a judgment call: whether to carry on regardless, tweak one's plans, or wait for another day. Some temperaments thrive on the unpredictability, others cannot stand it. But it's not all down to the genes; resourcefulness can be cultivated.

Counterintuitively, in this environment being blessed with much can be a curse. You become dependant on the conditions being right, on having just the right tool, on doing everything by the book. On the other hand being cursed with too little can be the blessing one needs to get creative, to discover new ways of doing... and being?

The apostle Paul observed that a dramatic change comes over a person, when they put their faith in Jesus. They become a "new creation". Jesus himself described it as being "born anew". Either way we come alive to the glorious truth that a person's wealth does not lie in what they have but it what they are. This establishes the conditions for resourcefulness: our wealth is within, not in the stuff we worry about and drag around.

More importantly it equips us for the greatest adventure of all: eternal life. And that adventure begins now. Suddenly everything takes on a fresh immediacy, a deeper relevance. The characteristics which make us who we are matter because we are being shaped after the likeness of our Saviour. Those around us matter because they, too, have the potential for eternal life. Our surroundings are important because they are the handiwork of the same Creator and Redeemer, who has a purpose for them too.

Possessions can be a dangerous distraction, holding us back, absorbing our attention - so we fail to notice what is going on around us, so we miss out on the chance to join in with what is happening on a deeper level, exercising gifts and abilities we never realised we had - or cultivating new ones we never dreamed of acquiring. O to be liberated from what is safe and secure, in order to come alive in the Spirit and join the dance!