Lately I find myself in the middle of a new and beautiful story. Somehow I’m amazed at how much my friends want to know about this new story in my life. How did it happen? What are the details? Where is the story going? How is it going to end? The questions go on and on.
Isn’t that how it always is? You hear that one of your friends just got engaged. How did he propose? What does the ring look like? When are they getting married? How did they meet? When did they know? The questions flood.
Someone tragically dies before their time. This stream of thought has been at the forefront lately with the sad news of Jessica Ridgeway’s passing (and what is with these sad stories from Colorado lately?). Who did it? What happened? Why? The questions flood.
We ask questions because we want to know the story. We want to understand how all of the pieces fit together, and we want to make sense of it all. We want to find joy in the story of the newly engaged couple, just as much as we want to make sense of the tragic death of a young child. We want to understand the story. We want to get caught up in the story, to lose ourselves in it.
What we fail, all too often, to realize is that we are already in the Story. The whole capitalizing-the-last-word-of-the-title thing works perfectly today. We are part of the Story, the bigger story, His story. We hear exciting news and we want to get caught up in it because we want to be a part of it, to share in the joy of others. We hear sad news and we find ourselves caught up in it, we want to share in other’s pain in the hopes that their pain might be less if we take some of it on. In the end, the details won’t really matter. How big the ring is, how he proposed, when they knew, it won’t really matter. Just the same, in the end the details of the tragic death won’t really matter. What will matter is whether we chose to see God in the middle of it, whether we let Him write the story or whether we tried to take the pen from His hands. (Though I imagine God writing with a quill with a giant feather on the end, it just seems so much more regal.) What will matter is whether or not we believe that He has a reason for writing the story the way He does, whether we like every plot twist and turn or not. The Story is still being played out, even if God already knows how it will end (and He does know the ending, by the way). Are your eyes open to see God writing The Story? Do you realize that you, just as you are, are a part of it and that He longs to use you for His glory?
What I’m Listening To:
“Restless” by Audrey Assad
“Like Jesus Does” by Eric Church
“You” by Switchfoot
“I Like It, I Love It” by Tim McGraw