Stories

...and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you,  who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.  These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.  (I Peter 1:4-7) 

      How would you like to hear a story in which the hero gets up in the morning with a good attitude, goes through a perfectly lovely day in which he accomplishes all he wishes without difficulty and goes to bed, and lived happily ever after?   It's much more interesting to read a story about a poor girl who leaves her poor aunt to go live with a rich cousin. The rich aunt and uncle leave the cousins in the care of another cousin while they travel for the aunt's health. The cousin given responsibility turns out to be a fraud who takes over the estate with the help of a forger. When word comes back that the aunt and uncle's ship sank, she sends the girls to a horrible boarding school where they are starved, beaten, locked in closets and otherwise abused and one of them gets sick. They escape and make their way to the poor aunt's, only to discover that she has nearly starved to death. The forger discovers them there. From there, various friends and helpers eventually get them to the police, who take them back to the estate and arrest the cruel aunt. The rich aunt and uncle return alive and well and set the poor aunt up as a school mistress and everyone lives happily ever after  (and all that in fewer than 200 pages!) 

           Yes, the second kind of story is much more interesting to read, and it's much closer to the kind of story that is our life. Oh, we don't think it's quiet as exciting as the Wolves of Whiloughby Chase, and sometimes we don't think the lives we see around us end as well. Most people resign themselves that their story ends at the school that's run like a cruel workhouse. Some get as far as running away. We forget, if we ever knew, that the story doesn't end, even with death. There is still more to the story...arriving home, discovering loved ones we thought we'd lost and, living happily ever after.

         The trials we face are the exciting part of the story. Unlike characters in most of the stories we read, we can work with the author. We can rest assured that no matter how bad the story gets, the author still has the coming home and living happily ever after waiting for us.