This isn’t a particularly religious idea, but it’s one that has grown on me over the years and one that I frequently repeated this summer. In the early 1990’s Patti and I were in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at a camp Patti had worked at during college, and which we often visited. What was unusual was that on this visit, my parents stopped to visit us and see the camp because they were also in the area. As it happened, had made a stop in Frankenmuth at Bronner’s the year-round Christmas store and were (I think) heading across the Canadian border to ride the train through the Agawa Canyon which Dad had read about for years in Model Railroader magazine.

That part makes sense. The part that never made sense to me was that later, when I asked them what they thought of the train ride… they didn’t go. They drove all the way to the Upper Peninsula, crossed the border into Canada, and… decided that the train ride was too expensive. They had a good time, I guess, but they didn’t do the thing. They didn’t do the thing that Dad had read about, and probably dreamed about, for years, all because the train tickets cost as much as a night in a hotel (they still cost around $100 CDN per person). I couldn’t get over it. It bugged me then, and it still bugs me now. There is a time to save money, but there are times when you just… do the stuff.

When Patti and I first went into ministry, we didn’t have much money and we did our best to squeeze what we could out of every penny. When we went to Annual Conference at Lakeside, we slept in a tent at the campground because that’s what we could afford. But we still would buy ice cream with the kids at least once during the week and play putt-putt golf and do other things with the kids just because we were there. There are times when you can make memories and there are other times when you can save money. Sometimes, you just… do the stuff.

This summer in Israel, our group made a choice of whether we wanted to stop for lunch each day, or just carry snacks in our backpacks and keep going so that we could see more archeological sites and spend more time at others. The choice for all of us was easy. We paid a lot of money to take this class, and to travel to Israel, to see and to learn… not to eat nice, sit-down lunches. In other words, we just wanted to… do the stuff.  On at least one evening, after we had been touring and hiking all day, and were already tired, we had the option of walking into downtown Bethlehem to do a little shopping and to get some falafel from a local vendor. I was already tired, but… my choice was to do the stuff.

At the National Scout Jamboree in July, there were also several times when I had the chance to walk less, to stay out of the heat and out of the sun instead of hiking an extra three or five miles… but sitting in the shade wasn’t why I was there. I made the extra effort because I wanted to do the stuff. I gave this same advice to several people during the Jamboree as they struggled with decisions about what they wanted to do with their day. I gave this advice because I knew, from watching my dad thirty years ago, that sometimes you only get one chance to do the stuff. Years from now no one will remember the time that you sat in the shade, but you will almost certainly remember climbing the rock wall, riding mountain bikes, or whatever else that you were daydreaming about.

This is also a part of the reason why I went back to school at a time when Patti and I are thinking seriously about our retirement. I always wondered if I had what it takes to earn an advanced degree. It was the stuff of daydreams, but could I do it? And a part of me said… do the stuff. I do not want to spend my retirement wondering if I could have done it. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, it’s time-consuming. Yes, at times it’s a giant pain in the keister. But I decided to try, and so every day I just… do the stuff.

One step at a time.

But, in the end, this does have an application to our spiritual life. As we move through our church year, especially as Christ Church sets goals for next year and considers a strategic plan and a new vision for our future, we will almost certainly arrive at moments when we must decide whether to continue doing what we’ve always done, or to do something different.

Sometimes rather than wondering how we might draw closer to God, or how we might find God’s purpose for our lives, or whether it might help to join a Bible study, have a daily devotion time, get back into the habit of reading scripture, attend church more regularly, join a Sunday school class, or do something entirely new and unexpected, what we ought to be thinking is whether we will regret NOT doing them later. Sometimes the best way out of our indecision, is simply to decide to just…

…do the stuff.

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