“Sometime’s I feel as though I were born in a circus, come out of my mother’s womb like a man from a cannon, pitched toward the ceiling of the tent, all the doctors and nurses clapping in delight from the grandstands. I unfold and find flight hundreds of feet above the center ring, the smell of popcorn in the air, the clowns gather below, amazed at my grace, and all the people chanting my name as my arms come out like wings and I move swan-like toward the apex, where I draw my arms in, collapse my torso to my legs, roll over in perfection, then slowly give in to gravity. My body falls back toward earth, the ground coming up quick, the center ring growing enormous beneath my falling weight. And this is precisely when it occurs to me that there is no net. And I wonder, What is the use of a circus? and Why should a man bother to be shot out of a cannon? and Why is the crowd’s applause so fleeting? and…Who is going to rescue me?
-Donald Miller (Introduction to Searching for God Knows What)
This is my profile. Have you ever felt that way, that in life you’re constantly taking risks, constantly being told to take risks, seemingly forced to take risks and you’re always working without a net?
I wonder how much different life would be if we had nets below us…I know that each of us has our own built in safety nets, but they never quite do the trick of saving us from every blow, from every mis-step, from every fall. What would you do differently in life if you knew without a doubt that you wouldn’t fail? How would you answer that question. With the skills/gifts/talents/abilities that you have been given and/or developed, what would you do if failure weren’t an option?
I’ve been trying to answer this question for quite some time and yet am still found clueless. Maybe it’s because I always insert the word ‘should’ for ‘would’. “What should I do?”
I think that this is something that has been ingrained in me since childhood, not by my parents but rather by the church. There’s always a conotation of guilt that surrounds this question for me. What if I could remove the ‘should’ replace it with the ‘would’ and focus on what passions and desires God has given me, the passions and desires God has placed in my heart. Then what would I say? Then what would I do? Then what would happen and how much bigger would those risks seem…how much more full would life feel?
What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?
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