“Jesus offers a life of risking. He interrupts our lives and asks, “Are you going to spend your life on your own glory, or do you want to live for something greater?” The preeminent temptation of our day is not some nefarious iniquity; it is the subtle, often silent, stroll into mediocrity. We spend an average of five hours a day in front of the television, looking for excitement from a two-dimensional made-up world, while letting life pass us by in the confined, three-dimensional world of our “living” room. Our greatest thrill of the day is reading the sports page; our deepest relationship is with some unknown cyber-friend we met two weeks ago on the Internet. We have traded in substantive dreams for those inspired by thirty-second commercials.
Into this world Jesus calls, “come and I will make you fishers of people.” He is offering us a life more exciting than anything imagined by the tinseled minds of Hollywood. He is calling us from our world of “settled arrangements,” using Aladdin’s words, to “a whole new world, a brand new place [you] never knew.” He is offering us nothing less than the kingdom of God.
— Jonathan Tran from the book Faith on the Edge: Daring to follow Jesus
