A few years ago, I joined my granddaughters, Emily and Eryn, watching an Animal Planet program highlighting the life of Susan Butcher.  She was the remarkable woman who won the grueling 1150-mile Iditarod sled-dog race four times, finishing in the top five twelve different years.

Jeanie and I have always been fascinated by her.  Raised in Boston, she disdained city life from grade school onward, preferring the outdoors and working with animals.  She moved to Alaska in her twenties.  Her reputation as an athlete, a superior sled dog trainer, and a ferocious competitor was such that her name became synonymous with the race she so often dominated.

In the 90’s she retired from racing, married and had two daughters, devoting her time to raising and training dogs.  The brief interview we saw was filmed at the beginning of that period in her life.  She and her husband were living in a 16’ by 20’ one-room cabin with no electricity or running water.  They got water from a nearby stream; heated and cooked with wood.  Their needs were few; their lifestyle uncommonly modest.

Ms. Butcher’s passion for the dogs and the competition led many people to assume what her priorities must be.  Responding to her rather austere lifestyle, the interviewer commented on the great sacrifices she and her husband were making to facilitate her passion for the dogs.  Imagine his surprise when she emphatically responded:

“I don’t live this way in order to race dogs.  I race dogs in order to live this way!”

How many people do you suppose are living the life they set out to live; the life they envisioned when the journey was just beginning?  Believers especially should be aware of our loyalty to the vision God deposited in us.

Susan Butcher had a dream, a vision, long before her affinity for dog sled competition. She wanted to live in the wilderness.  As an 8-year-old she opened an essay with, “I hate the city!”  Her priorities were a relation-ship with family, with the creatures, and with the land.  For a lifetime Susan Butcher made sure what she was doing was consistent with what she was wanting to say with her life.

Everyone’s life is telling a story, one with a moral, a central truth; something that will be passed on to the following generation.  What important truth is your life, and my life, projecting down the time line?  This is not what we say, or teach; it is what we clearly demonstrate by our ‘manner of life.’ (2 Tim. 3:10)

The way we live is more than our relationships, our career choices, and our temperament.  It also involves our relation to the earth and its resources, our place on the planet, our dwelling, its furnishings, and the stuff we acquire over time. . . . and how we use our stuff, and for whom it is used.  In short, it’s our ‘portfolio of values;’ the hard evidence of what our life was actually about!

Scott and Helen Nearing gained national attention in the 1970’s through the publication, Mother Earth News.  The Nearing’s carved out their lives on the land, building their own home of natural, available materials, raising their own produce and livestock, and in the process inspiring a generation of ‘back-to-the-landers.’

They appreciated quiet, industry, and simplicity.  As far as I know they were not Christians, but so many of the things they valued seemed to closely approximate the kind of life suggested by the story of Jesus.

Jesus didn’t comment on lifestyle issues directly, but spoke more about attitudes toward money and things.  He, and the Apostles, emphasized contentment, simplicity, service, hospitality, and relationship.  The question is not, “Do you live in a big house or a small house?” Obviously, some folks need a bigger home, a newer car, a better job.  The question is, are our priorities helping us tell the story we wanted to tell?

Wouldn’t you agree that something about how we live should testify of the truths and values of the Kingdom we represent?  Isn’t that what ‘witness’ actually means?  Our life is continual choices, requiring we keep an eye on our changing habits, desires, and motivations. If we don’t, it’s easy to wake up one day and find we’re telling a much different story than we had intended.

Jeanie and I have been blessed to live out some of the dreams of our youth!  We’ve enjoyed the countryside, the woods, the herb gardens, the creatures, the privilege of representing Jesus Christ, and of course, that host of wonderful saints who have so sweetened our journey.  And we trust, like many of you, that we will have lived in such a way that most of our ‘stuff’ will be secured somewhere else.  (1 Peter 1:3, 4; Matthew 6:19-34)