A-Maze-ing McyD's MacGyver Meeting

How does one make a good decision?

Today, I was walking out of my apartment with Bethany as we both prepared to venture outward to visit the city (we live about one kilometer north of the inner-city of Baoding).

"Where are you guys meeting for lunch?" Bethany asked inquisitively of the location of the weekly "MacGyver Meeting/ Dude Time" that takes place each week and consists of Jon, Tim, Cameron, and I divulging the inner-most recesses of our hearts and minds.

"Well, we're going to this really ethnic food restaurant in the middle of the city. It's a little pricey, but there's some amazing American cuisine there that we're excited to try," I answered her.

"Ahhh," Bethany said smugly as she grinned through her response.

"McDonald's?"

"Yep."
.........

And so met the first installment of the Spring, 2010 MacGyver Meeting, named after the famous late-80's/ early 90's TV show, making light of the way our "small group" meeting is kind of just thrown together with no real leadership or planning, but seems to result in amazing discussion and deep thoughts, similar to how the character from "Macgyver, Angus MacGyver, constantly makes huge bombs and dynamite to blow up entire compounds just by using some shoestrings, a paper clip, and a wad of chewing gum--just, being resourceful with what we have.

Since this was our first meeting of the semester, it seemed appropriate that we had no real topic to discuss outside of what we'd study together over the semester. After deciding that we'd be looking at The Greatest Letter Ever Written to an Italian, we settled in around a new, more immediate topic: making decisions.

"It's just been a tough time of trying to see how to make a good decision with the next 3-5 or more years of life," Jon stated. He proposed that, when we're looking through the word and the circumstances of life press around us to make a decision about life ahead, as they are now for all four of us, it seems like we want to take the responsibility of walking out a big decision off of ourselves and kind of just pin it on the Father, like a cosmic game of "Who stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?"

"Yeah," Tim interjected, "it's like, if He's not talking directly about something, how do we decide?"

"He's always talking," I said, over which Tim trumped,"Well, if He's always talking, then I'm not listening 'cause I can't hear anything!"

My desire now is to just see Him for who he is, trying to really know him and walk with him. Where does trust, though, fit with the principles of really taking responsibility for our own lives and actions, especially if it comes time to make a big decision and all the Father is saying is still consistently, "Do what you want." There's this word "call" that keeps getting kicked around that I still don't understand entirely but comes to bear entirely on this conversation.

Well, I guess that means I need to...figure out what I want? Indeed, a perplexing simplicity in the maze before us.

A maze we're not walking through alone.