Why Adventure?

Have you ever won­dered how the word “adven­ture” is con­nect­ed to the word “advent”? What exact­ly is going on there?

The ety­mol­o­gy of words is an inter­est­ing branch of study which quick­ly leads into rab­bit trails and time warps. The word advent, as most of you know, comes from the latin verb “advenire” which is a per­fect infini­tive ver­sion of a verb mean­ing “to come”. We tend to con­nect advent with the com­ing of Jesus and the sea­son lead­ing up to his arrival.

Adven­ture, as it turns out, has the same stem. It comes from the same latin word, but does­n’t focus on the act of arriv­ing as much as the item to which we’ve arrived at. Turns out when peo­ple say that it’s not about the des­ti­na­tion, it’s about the jour­ney, they’re wrong. 😏 

Adven­ture is all about the des­ti­na­tion! Which is why when my guys were lit­tle an adven­ture was: Tar­get. Adven­tures come in all shapes and sizes. The tod­dler run­ning around Tar­get in the mid­dle of win­ter is hav­ing a grand adven­ture. Win­nie the Pooh walk­ing through the woods is on a grand adven­ture. Each and every new sight is a grand adven­ture. Teach­ing our chil­dren to “see” like AA Milne, Beat­rix Pot­ter, or Wen­dell Berry, turns the most mun­dane loca­tion into an adven­ture destination. 

We spent hours dri­ving through red rocks this past spring. Did my guys watch movies in the van? No way man! They embraced the adven­ture of those red rocks. Did they look sim­i­lar? Ayuh, but they weren’t exact­ly the same and we noticed it. That’s the beau­ty of adven­ture. We learn to see.  This per­spec­tive shows us the heart, hunger, and humor of God. He cre­at­ed those red rocks. He sent the flood to refine them. He delights in them dai­ly.  When we embrace this world as the place for advent, we seek the one who gave it to us, and we grow clos­er to Him in our adventure.