Love Does
Like many, my introduction to Bob Goff came through Donald Miller in his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years (Thomas Nelson). As Miller was working to turn his earlier bestseller Blue Like Jazz from a collection of autobiographical essays into a movie, he was realizing just how unremarkable his life had been until that point. Eventually he came to terms with the fact that he’d need to edit his story in a big way before it would become very interesting, and this got him to thinking that maybe it would be better to just live a remarkable life in the first place.
Enter Bob Goff, a guy who had done just that with his life. Miller tells some funny and inspiring stories about Goff’s antics in A Million Miles, like how he went with his kids to give keys to their house to world leaders in hopes of showing them hospitality and friendship. And then there was the New Year’s Day parade they organized in their neighborhood, with the only catch being that there would be no spectators — just participants.
It was only a matter of time, of course, but Goff has just released his own book, Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World (Thomas Nelson). Each of the book’s thirty-something short chapters begins with a variation of “I used to think… but now I know…,” then tells a story that includes a lesson about God or faith or love in one way or another, representing a shift in perspective and way of living.
In the book it becomes clear that Goff doesn’t sit still for very long. I’m still trying to figure out how he manages his time living in San Diego, running a law firm in Seattle, teaching at two colleges, staying at his summer lodge in British Columbia, and traveling often to Uganda for his nonprofit work, among other places. I’m also trying to figure out how he affords it all: buying sail boats, flying to New York at the last second for what he thinks is a prank, and taking his ten-year-old daughter to Paris for the weekend because she wants tea. (Do lawyers really make that much money?)
He really enjoys capers, and considers whimsy a significantly underappreciated virtue. And in some respects, I’d say he’s right. Many of us do live pretty unremarkable lives, considering anything whimsical to be childlike, and not in a good way. As Miller puts it in A Million Miles, working hard and buying a Volvo may be part of the American Dream, but it doesn’t make for a very good story.
Many of us would do well to pursue adventure rather than just accepting the stifling status quo of suburbia as the only possible way to live. And Goff gives us a lot of inspiration towards that end. When he’s not sneaking into his best friend’s hotel room to order $400 of room service without his friend’s knowing, he’s just as likely being whimsically generous, like the time he let a young stranger use his yard and his boat for an elaborate marriage proposal just because he had the audacity to ask. And he’s started a nonprofit called Restore International, which works in Uganda and India to fight injustices against children (all the proceeds of the book go toward this cause, by the way).
There’s much in Goff to appreciate, and I’m sure his book will stimulate the imaginations of its readers. In an age of slacktivism, I especially like his encouragement to embody the kind of love that does stuff — that sets out on adventures and is generous and serves in real ways. As the subtitle puts it, we really can discover a secretly incredible life in an ordinary world. But I find it unfortunate that so many of his stories involve inordinate sums of disposable cash, which for most of us is not the ordinary world we inhabit. It’s even less ordinary for billions around the world.
I believe it’s possible for all of us to set out on adventures, be they near or far, and each of us can be whimsically generous with our time, our money, our gifts. We don’t need to settle for the status quo. But for those of us who aren’t jet-setting lawyers, we’ll need to get creative and figure out what this looks like in our ordinary, everyday lives.
We can’t escape the fact that the vast majority of the time, life will not be a thrill ride. So I’d encourage you to read Love Does, but then pick up The Practice of the Presence of God to learn an equally important part of what it means to live faithfully and well in the midst of truly normal, everyday life.
