Assume the Right Things

“Love always assumes it can find a way to express itself.” –Bob Goff, Love Does, 178

This resonated with me. Yes, the love expressing itself part. But even moreso, the assumes part.

I often say, “It never hurts to ask.”

In the last fifteen years or so, “chance” encounters, off-the-wall ideas, and audacious requests have taken us all over the world and gotten us into all kinds of stuff. We tell stories like these in our new book.

• “I just want to intern with Amish people,” Chrissy said to a friend while exasperated with North American consumerism. While not Amish, our friends at Jubilee Partners taught (and continue to teach) us a lot.
• “Do you have any friends we could stay with in Nicaragua?” I asked of a couple I’d just met at Jubilee Partners. We ended up living in a village with no power, transportation, or a well (let alone running water).
• “Do you want buy El Porvenir’s coffee?” I asked Miguel, a gringo in Nicaragua, in a season when the market had slipped to its lowest point in 50 years. Not only did his co-op buy it, they paid price befitting the village’s excellent, organic, fair trade beans.
• “Are there any openings for a guy like me?” I asked an InterVarsity VP who passed me to another one who passed me to the guy who would be come my boss. And so I found a dream job.

“It never hurts to ask”…This thinking assumes a lot.

By asking “What if…” and by saying “That would be amazing!” and then actually doing something, we assume…

God exists, is in charge, and is active in and around us and other people.

Sometimes God does things that are surprising, crazy, better than we can imagine.

Other people want life to be different and better, too.

Living to follow Jesus often brings suffering. But it often is a lot of fun, too.

Fun is OK.

Life can change quickly and beautifully.

Love can find a way to express itself.

Adding up all these assumptions, and you start to arrive at a picture of faith, the kind that we find in the Bible: what might God do in this?

If you don’t assume that God might do something new, something different, something good, do you have faith at all?