Surprise Me: Day 1

Surprise Me: The 30 Day Faith Experiment is a book written by Terry Esau. These blogs titled "Surprise Me" are my daily journal entries. Terry's challenge is to ask God to surprise you for thirty days. A simple three word prayer; Surprise Me God. I'm a bit of a cynic, but I'm giving this a whirl.

I started this "experiment" quite cynical. I've got my own version of "Purpose Driven Fears". The next "get god quick" scheme. I've always been one who saw the spiritual life as a slow one. Not "slow" meaning nothing happens in life, but "slow" as in the growing of strong roots taking a long time; and that you probably won't feel the strength you have until someone tries to tear you outta the ground. But I'm also one who believes in "life experimentation"; literally using yourself as a philosophical guinea pig. So this idea would seem right up my alley; and it would be, if it wasn't a "god" thing. But I decided to take the challenge on anyway.

Day 1 was uneventful. I don't know if I'm supposed to do this, but I'm reading each day of Esau's book as I go through the experiement. It adds an interesting element to the practice of looking out for surprises. I have his to compare mine to. And the first day left me frustrated. I thought about it while driving to work, but then I got work and it disappeared. I didn't think about it again, until I got back in my car to drive home. What kind of surprises was I gonna find if I only looked for them while in my car. A fender-bender perhaps, but that doesn't quite seem to be the "holy encounter" I'm looking for. Though I'm not so naive as to think that it couldn't be.

So I ended Day 1 by reading Esau's Day 2. The whole "chatted with the biker instead of cruising by" story. Now the cynic in me was confirmed. I thought back on other books I'd read that worked this way. The whole idea of how the author decided to do this "experiment" and WOW! did things start happening. Then you decide to do it too, and nothing. You can barely remember to think about it, let alone fully engage in the concept. I guess that speaks to the idea that you truly must engage the idea if it's to have any significance. To some degree, you can't expect to be getting tons out of something, if you're not really "into" the idea in the first place. I confess I'm not into it. But, you know what G.I. Joe said, "Knowing is half the battle". So with that I close the door on the day.