Living Life and Paddling Together

This week I went white water rafting on the Arkansas River with my family. Despite the rain and mildly chilly weather (for August), it was a blast. Cañon City was beautiful, as was the Arkansas River. And it was wonderful to spend time with my family, who I don't get to see very often, due to the fact that I live in Denver and they reside in St. Louis.

I love my family so much, but as with all families (particularly the ones with six teenagers/kids all relatively close in age), there can be a decent amount of arguing and bickering. We love each other to death, but sometimes we really suck at working together.

We found, however, that on the raft we had some of the best teamwork we'd ever had. As I was talking with my mom later in the day, she mentioned she had thought of a great analogy relating to our good teamwork on the raft. 

See when we were paddling, we had to listen to our guide, or the raft would have toppled us into the quite cold water surrounding us. When she said to paddle hard, we paddled hard. When she yelled to paddle backwards, we paddled backwards. We had to watch the person in front of us and follow their paddle-strokes, keeping us all in sync, or we wouldn't have been able to make any forward progress or maneuvered the rapids.

We listened to the guide and worked as a team. 

As humans, we weren't made to work independently, we were made for teamwork, made to work together as we maneuver the rapids of life. And we weren't created to build a team on our own. In fact, we are utterly incapable of teamwork on our own. Pride, wanting to be the best, competition, selfishness, laziness - the list goes on and on - hinder us from truly working together. 

A good team is comprised of people who use their strengths for the good of their companions. It is made up of individuals who empower one another to be the best they can be as they strive towards a common goal and avoid flipping the raft and falling into the cold waters of life. 

But because of our pride, laziness, selfishness, and so on, we can't form these teams. We fight for ourselves, paddle on our own time, and end up caught in branches, twisting and turning, jostled through rapids instead of smoothly avoiding the massive rocks in the middle of our paths. The only way we can truly work together as a team is if we listen to our guide, and the guide must be perfect - someone without a prideful desire to be best, to be first, or a lazy spirit who doesn't want to work, or complains because they are tired, or puts their own safety and interests and desires before those of the team. 

In essence, we need a perfect guide. 

But we aren't perfect, far from it! As my little brother sarcastically (but quite accurately) said this week after forgetting to pick up one of his toys, "Am I perfect? Uh...NO!" So we need a perfect guide, but we aren't perfect.

Sounds like quite the dilemma, circular reasoning that points towards a solution and then puts us back where we started with vague ideas and no solution.
 
The only answer is a higher being, a perfect God who has no faults and can guide us. This someone speaks in different voices, through different experiences and by different means, but His voice is always perfect, His guidance is always good, His ways are always in our interest for His glory. 

God's word, the Bible, is one of the best places to seek guidance as we live in community and work as a team of people who believe in and love Jesus. It is full of examples of how we should live to be like Christ, to love God with our lives. The only way we can live in community and harmony with one another is when we follow our Perfect Guide.

This life is far from perfect. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it shines, but we are made to paddle together, guided by our Perfect Savior.