Telling a Story and Stinken To It

During these later years of life, I have the sense that an experience I’ve had, whether good or bad, has been line or scene from a novel or a movie—like I'm a part of, at least a small story. Even in my dreams! I suspect this phenomenon has grown largely in the last few years with the ubiquitous presence of Facebook pages and blogging platforms, although those who have been so kind to “friend” me will attest of my seldom presence.  I realize that every human being has a unique story unfolding as they live out their lives. Wow! I’m thinking right now that there are literally billions of different stories going on all at once, intertwining, overlapping, loving each other, hating each other, struggle together, and laugh together. Every minute new human stories are beginning in birth and old ones are concluding in death.

It started the other evening; sitting in my lounger, minding my own business, perusing what I had underlined, years ago, in The Sacred Romance authored by Brent Curtis. This is one paragraph I had underlined:

"The deepest convictions of our heart are formed by stories and reside there in the images and emotions of [a] story....Life is not a list of propositions, it is a series of dramatic scenes. As Eugene Peterson said, 'We live in a narrative, we live in a story. We have a beginning and an end, we have a plot, we have character.' Story is the language of the heart. Our souls speak not in the naked facts of mathematics or the abstract propositions of systematic theology; they speak the images and emotions of story."

I love stories because my living, itself, is a story. My story is taking place in a particular context, culture, and time in history. And dependent on how I grew up; the dynamics of my family, and a million other factors, my story is going to come out differently than any other person who has or ever will live.

But then I must ask the question: Is there any common element that runs through every person’s story, an element that can be seen in every life?

I have never thought of it before about it this way, but the Christian message really introduces a story of its own; and if it is indeed true, it's a story that explains the "plot" of each and every human life story. What is this lot? It's a love story. It's the story of God's love for me, individually and humanity, collectively. In other words; God's seeking to win our hearts again and again, and our responses to this movement toward us. Don’t we see this in the well known text of John 3:16: For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. So, I’m going to challenge myself again to look at my life, look at where I my now and where I’ve come from, and see if I find new evidence of God drawing me closer to who He truly is. I’m going to go beyond minding my own business and adventurously notice if I can find God calling me in the circumstances of my life, even in the hard or painful times.  I’m going to listen more carefully for His whispers of joy, in fear, and pain.

Father, God, I recognize you as the ultimate author.  Your story is the only account that makes sense of my life and brings beauty into my story.  Thank you Father for the human author who said my life could be the very poetry of Your personal handwriting.

Brought in Kicking, Struggling and Resentful

"You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?" Found in, The Logic of the Spirit

C.S. Lewis, the self-named most reluctant and dejected convert in all England, penned those, now famous and oft-quoted, account of his conversion. Unlike some who decide to follow Jesus with urgency and willingness of their heart, Lewis came kicking and screaming! While some, like Anne Lamott, confesses in her writing of Traveling Mercies, may resonate with Lewis's dogged reluctance, many that I know, gladly pursue the path home.

Lewis's reluctant conversion has always fascinated me, but I am even more moved by the glimpse into God's character his story, over some time now, has provides me. Lewis reminds me of the love of God that relentlessly pursues even the reluctant prodigal who would turn and run in the opposite direction in order to try and escape God's gracious embrace. It seems to me that the God revealed in Lewis's account is a God in pursuit. This set me wondering....is God even particularly enamored with the reluctant prodigal, leaving the ninety-nine sheep, as Jesus insists in Luke's gospel, to pursue the one lost sheep.  

The apostle Paul, who described himself as "the chief of sinners," often talked about this God in pursuit. In what is perhaps the apex of his letter to the Romans, Paul writes: "For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous person; though perhaps for the good someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates God's own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of the Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life" Romans 5:1-11.

Paul's progressive description of my condition before God reveals the depths of God's love. First, Paul notes that God's love pursued me (and all humanity) "while I was still helpless." Then, Paul states that God loved "while I was yet a sinner," and finally, God loved and reconciled me along with humanity even "while I was an enemy." Indeed, Paul insists on God's great love towards even the vilest offender through the life and death of Jesus. He doesn't make this claim as one who stands removed from the vilest offender. He makes it as a part of his own testimony. He says: "It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all."1 Timothy 1: 12 -17

But I've had an masticating of my soul beginning with last Sunday's sermon, continuing this past week that Paul's recognition of God's grace didn't end with himself. As Paul grasped the depths of God's reconciling love in his own life, it led him to proclaim that same reconciliation for others. To the Corinthian church – 2 Corinthians 5: 18-19 he wrote, "Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed to us the word of reconciliation." 

In reflecting on the reconciling work of God in Christ, scholar Miroslav Volf in his writing of Exclusion and Embrace draws a pointed application: "God does not abandon the godless to their evil but gives the divine self for them in order to receive them into divine communion through atonement, so also should we-whoever our enemies and whoever we may be." This morning, I capstone my recognition, after viewing the film Risen, yesterday....... along with my own inclusion into God's gracious love, I cannot help but include others in the good news of God's reconciling love in Jesus—even with those I might deem enemies.

Father, God, I sometimes struggle but more often do not fully grasp the depths of Your great reconciliation.  But then, I am moved by the Holy Spirit in seeing a common inheritance as one in need of saving and am drawn deeper into the embrace of You, as the “Hound of Heaven,” in pursuit.  Amen