How to be a better story-teller

Do you see your life as a story? Is there purpose to it or is it just a random series of occurrences over which you ultimately have no control? Is there a script? If so, who writes it?

Needless to say, there is drama in my life. While it lasts, it’s likely to be full of suspense. We know, however, how my earthly life will turn out, just as it turns out for us all. I seek to be transparent in what I write here because I believe that by God acting in my life and by my observing and recording how he acts, I’m reflecting to the world part of what it means to be human and to be a player in his grand narrative. I have a small but not insignificant part in his earthly production.

Human history is going somewhere. It has a beginning, a middle and an end, and then, remarkably, a continuing, never-ending second act.  I live my own story within this larger context. As G.K. Chesterton has written, “If there is a purpose to the world, there is a person. I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller.”

I have recently taken to reading the Bible as God’s story, a coherent and extraordinarily integrated account of his actions in and through his people, and not just as a patched-together collection of books written by various actors over the centuries. There is internal coherence to his story into which he’s written my life. If he indeed knew me before the creation of the universe, then it should come as no surprise that I can discover traces of who I am and how I’m to live with thoughtful reading of his word.

Just as I know how my life will end, so we know the beginning, middle and end of God’s grand plan for humanity. The mystery remains in how he chooses to use us for his greater purpose and how we respond to his call. It is in the telling of our stories that we learn more about who we are and who God is. Gathered together, our stories reflect the grand sum of his great love for his children. And to become better tellers of our own stories, it helps to read closely the story he has already given us of himself and his masterful plan for all creation.