“Each of us asks the existential question, ‘Is God really telling a good story, and is my life one of his great stories?’”. That thought is lifted from the pages of The Healing Path, by Dr. Dan Allender. But that thought is not unique to Allender….it is a thought we all actually wrestle with day in and day out. In the midst of this daily journey called life we wonder what it might be that God is doing. Sometimes we wonder if He has dropped us from the cast of characters included in what He is unfolding. We wonder if we no longer matter much in the narrative of His script. There are other times that it seems we must be the antagonist in His story….the one who is on the losing end of this drama that is laid out on the desk of the divine newsroom. Once in a while we get a brief glimpse of possibly being the protagonist…..the one who at the center of God’s attention and the object of His affections, the one who is destined to experience redemption in spite of all the ‘drama’ that surrounds us.
Christmas is a time of stories……it is full of books and movies that tell stories concerning all sorts of dimensions of the holiday. One of our family’s favorites is Elf starring Will Ferrell. It is the fanciful story of redemption…..a misplaced infant who grows up among elf’s at Santa’s North Pole but eventually wants to reconnect with family, especially his Dad. Just beneath the laugh out loud strata of this movie is very simple yet profound truth…..we all search for knowing how we fit into a bigger story and see how our part is critically important. We ache to have the inadequacy of our circumstances take on meaning in something that is beyond our control. We want to experience what we hope is God telling a good story and our lives being a great part of it. That will be the focus of the next several Sundays and our Christmas Eve.