My first official business trip was to the Mississippi Gulf Coast in August of 2000. At 21 years old, I felt like a young professional jetting into New Orleans and meeting a client a short drive across the Mississippi State Line. I barely remember the reason for the trip, but I did learn something about faith that echoes in my head to this day.
My client was a Cajun local who put being a good host over any kind of productivity. He insisted that we go out for a some seafood and experience all his town had to offer. Spoiler alert: It didn’t offer much. But the spot he was most excited about was the nearby casino. As he explained to me, the legendary Mississippi riverboat casinos were still around. Kind of.
State laws dictated that casinos be restricted to “mobile marine vessels” so ingenious developers built huge casinos on floating barges – making them technically legal even though they would never travel anywhere. The entrances were on land, so I couldn’t tell when I actually left the riverbank and was on the river but I there was no mistaking when I’d reached the casino. Rows and rows of retirees sat hypnotized by the neon lights, pulling on levers and pulling drags off of their cigarettes. If death had it’s own purgatory, that would have been it.
I’ve always carried around that memory and one day in church a song hit me like a shovel striking a long-buried box…
You call me out upon the waters
The great unknown, where feet may fail
And there I find you in the mystery
In oceans deep, my faith will stand
This is the kind of risk I’m called toward. To untie the lines, to let go of the shore and step out onto the water with a faith that must look foolish to the world. Somewhere, somehow I have a desire within me to walk on the water and too often for too long I’ve been getting by like a Mississippi Casino. I’ve done just enough to feel technically right – I go to church, I don’t kill people and I feel bad when I see a homeless person. But like that casino I’m lashed to a comfortable shore and inside I grow old and lifeless just… existing.
Faith dies when it’s tied to convenience; it thrives when it’s allowed to go wherever God calls. Wherever. Just typing that makes me uncomfortable. I’m meant to be bold, to be risky, to break free of the myth that it’s always better to be safe than sorry. This brings me to a man named Mario.
My first memory of crying is because of the game Super Mario Brothers. Specifically, it was one jump obstacle that I could not figure out. Time after time, life after life, I wasted trying to make a long jump – land on a tiny ledge – and make second jump with no running start. If I managed to stick the landing on the ledge, I’d take a deep breath, make a wish, and push the controller button as hard as I could. Mario would always fall short. Eventually it became more frustrating than a little kid could take and I started weeping.
It wasn’t until watching my big brother play that I’d learn the secret. The trick is not to think the ledge is a safe place to land. He didn’t stick the landing, but immediately jumped forward again and safely made it across. You see, Mario succeeded by taking the risk and leaping away from the closest thing to comfortable. It was the only way to win.
A few years after my visit, those floating casinos were hit hard by Katrina. They’d been designed to be just like any other building but they were nearly all wiped out overnight. I see in those ruins the same lesson I learned from Mario…
Sometimes solid ground isn’t the safest place to be.