Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" is a favorite book to many. The adults in "Treasure Island" were unlike many adults we know--grownups who staked all, risked everything, for nothing more than some map scrawled on a piece of paper.

The adults most of us know stay home, keep their heads down, go to work in the morning and then they come back again in the evening. But in "Treasure Island," they risked, they lied if needed, and they had great lives and exciting deaths.

A speaker at a graduation ceremony once said, "Remember one thing as you go forth from school into life: Even if you win the rat race, remember, you're still a rat."

He was telling the truth. There is this relentless, virtually irresistible tendency of life to transmute from adventure into tame predictability. One day you're an angry, young thing, ready to grab the world by the tail and twist, dying to set the woods on fire. And the next day you're some old guy, slouched in an easy chair, complaining about how the kids are ruining the world. One day you're a kid, excited about the prospect of leaving home, abandoning your parents, and going to college where you can think as you like, and they can't do anything about it. And then the next day you're just a college student, going through the motions, trying to accumulate enough hours to graduate.

Jesus says a kingdom belongs to those with the guts to stake it all on the treasure.