Skip to main content

Our Stories

          For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

 

I’ve been listening to a series of podcasts by John Ortberg. Yesterday’s broad topic was about our each having a story. He’s been talking about this idea for a couple of weeks, but it was only yesterday that my mind dredged up a memory of something that happened more than 25 years ago. A speaker said, “Someday, you’ll be up here telling your story.” As I drove home, I wept as I said to God, “But I don’t have a story.”

When I was doing genealogy, people told me that no one would be interested in their stories.

Both when I have raised puppies and when I have been around parents whose health was failing, I noticed that since I saw the puppy or the person every day, I didn’t notice their increase in size or decrease in health as clearly as someone who only saw the dog or parent once in a while.

We are blind to our own stories most of the time. We don’t notice our lives as stories because we’re too busy dealing with our lives or because our lives don’t seem to follow the simple pattern we expect in books. “Nothing ever happens” in our lives, we say, even though we’ve just gone through some trial. Perhaps we go so far as to express irritation because the challenge we’ve been facing is getting in the way of our having a story. The irritation is partly because we want our story to be a romance or a rom-com; instead, it’s a quest. We want it to be man against the world, but it is often man against himself.

But a word used in the last sentence is integral to a story: against. If everything went well, there would be no story. It’s the struggle against something that makes the story interesting. The character in the story doesn’t think so. Frodo Baggins, Harry Potter, and Luke Skywalker never consoled themselves with the idea that what they were going through would make their story interesting.

When Paul wrote of being convinced that nothing could separate us from the love of God, he was setting up our stories for us. How are we to know that none of those things can separate us from the love of God unless some of them try? And how can there be a story if we have no struggle against those things? How can there be a story if we do not learn the truth of what Paul has said, that none of those things separate us from the love of God? 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Virgin?

           Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)           This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 1:18)           But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”            “How will this be,” Mary asked the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Saved?

  I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:28-30) “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ ” (Matthew 7:21-23) Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar. As it is written: “So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.” (Romans 3:4)   What conclusion do you draw when someone who was raised in a Christian family and church, perhaps even playing a significant role in a chur...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more