Two things happened today that centered around the word “courageous.” First, I was listening to a Christian radio station while driving this morning and heard a caller talk about a truck driver who was catching a lot of flack from others because of his faith. The people harassing him were joking about him not being a manly man like the other truck drivers. The person calling in rightly noted that it takes a lot more courage to go against the tide than it does to roll with it and that the man being harassed for his faith was being more of a man that his accusers.
Then this afternoon I was invited to dinner and to watch a movie with about 20 other guys. The movie was Courageous – a Christian movie about being a father and husband and being the spiritual lead in the home. I suppose the same men who accused the truck driver of not being a manly man would readily say the same about the group of guys I was with tonight – guys from their teenage years into their 70s.
Granted, Christian movies can be contrived and a bit unrealistic in their dialogue at times, but if you pay attention to the message and not the lack of tens of millions of dollars to produce them, you can leave with some lasting takeaways. The most obvious takeaway from the movie and the recurring theme of the day is to be courageous. I don’t know in what way that message makes sense for you, but I suspect it can take many forms. Perhaps there is something you need to say to someone, a decision you need to make that others might not agree with or understand, or taking some leap of faith that you know in your heart you need to do even if you aren’t sure where you’ll land.
I can’t tell you how you need to implement the lesson or even how I will do so, but I can still have confidence in the wisdom of leap year lesson #298 – Be courageous.
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