Leaving the $6 Million Dollar Bible Behind for the Wilderness

Facing change

Cher was on the phone with me this week. Our church prayed for her to get an amazing job out of state— and she got it! It’s a big win!

But she was crying. She was getting cold feet. It was such good news, but she was afraid to change her life.

I couldn’t get it together

I remember right after Sofia and I graduated seminary— we spent that whole year just trying to adjust to life “outside” the walls of the Ivory Tower. I was a mess. I just couldn’t get myself together. It was like I had PTSD. I kept chain smoking tobacco, because my life as I knew it— was over.

Do you know what my days in seminary were like? Most days, I’d walk into this gold leafed marble library to visit my favorite object— a Gutenberg Bible— a $6 million dollar bible encased in glass. Then, I’d lay around on plush velvet couches reading Aristotle.

And suddenly, that life was over.

Right when I graduated seminary was a period of my life which I call “The Change.

When you go through “The Change” you leave what you have known— or your Garden of Eden— and actually start focusing on building something real in your life.

Graduation time

It’s kind of like when you see kids graduating from high school. Suddenly, they feel the pressure of having to live as an adult. Instead of celebrating and looking forward to the next phase of their life, they’re lost.

The whole point of going to school in the first place is to graduate.

The whole point of being an adolescent is to grow up.

And now that I had graduated and grown up— I was scared… to graduate… and to grow up.

I knew it but didn’t want it

There are no $6 million dollar bibles out in the wilderness. They’re in glass cases, in gold leafed marble libraries— way in the center of the Garden of Eden. I knew that. You think I didn’t know? Of course I knew.

I was Akamai.

I knew what was out there in the wilderness— it was my one chance to start living my real life and I didn’t want to go.


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