I have found myself asking a lot of questions lately about my life. I can see glimpses of the bigger picture but my story is still unfolding like the pages of a novel, to steal a line from Elderidge. Everyday we are faced with people we know, people we don't know, people we are going to meet and people we try to avoid. Each decision we make is writing another section of our story. I remember when I was growing up an old preacher we had would always ask every Sunday, "If you were to die today, how would you be remembered?" I never stopped to think about that statement until later on in life. It's the story of our life. No, we don't carry light sabers or magic rings, we carry our legacy with us.
As I get older I am finding that the more I am around individuals and if there is time the conversations generally revolve around personal stories. Think about it for a second just like the way Elderidge is writing, the stories we tell of our dog getting loose and running around the neighborhood, a promotion at work, a flat tire, getting married, sickness, ect. are all stories. Many people like to elaborate (a white lie) on the stories to make them more interesting like the old example "the big one that got away." Let's face facts here, a little embellishment is good for entertainment value but it should not overwrite the real story. Some stories are never mentioned in words. It reminds me so much of watching the Andy Griffith Show. Opie and Andy go fishing and hardly speak to one another, but yet they are still building their story by bonding.
The story of our lives are constantly being written. Here recently there was some great flooding throughout southern West Virginia. Although the story is one of tragedy it is another chapter of our lives. I was lucky not to be affected by the flooding but I had many friends that were cut off from their homes due to their roads washing out or their homes completely ruined. Every story including this one leaves an imprint on our lives. Many of the Churches in the area have responded to this tragedy by collecting food, water, cleaning supplies, clothes and toys to distribute the the victims of the flooding. Even if you only donated or prayed for those affected you have written another story in your life.
Elderidge quotes Robert McKee, who is a Hollywood Screenwriting teacher, "Stories are equipment for living." The movie industry takes these stories and puts them on the silver screen. Why do they do it? Entertainment of course, but sometimes someone will recognize something in the story being shown that will help them understand part of their own story. It is this discovery of Gods bigger plan for us that can keep our stories in motion. If we were able to see the end result, the journey would be just something we have to do. I remember taking Algebra in high school. We thought that the teacher was pretty dumb. The answers were in the back of the book. We quickly realized that it was not as easy as we thought it was. Even though we had the answer, we had to explain how we arrived at that answer. Isn't this not the same as taking a vacation? The destination is known, but the story of how you get there is what we are going to remember the most. For example the time we got the flat tire and searched for a tire store that was open on a Sunday night or missing the exit on the interstate.
What happens when our story become dull and not interesting? We need to identify what is going on and develop the strategy to help close that chapter of our lives. The book 'Who Moved My Cheese' talks about getting out of the rut that you have developed by doing the same things over and over again. Some of our ruts are very deep, but yet it is another story that we can write of how we overcame the rut. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, " He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end." Two lines of the old hymn "Blessed Assurance" comes to my mind when reading this section of the book.
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