Life Stories
Monday (December 29)
Life Stories
Psalm 139:16
In your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
Has the thought that your life is a story become old hat by now? Is that a tired metaphor after years of hearing pastors and authors say it? If so, I’m right there with you. The first time I ever heard a pastor say the phrase, “Think of history as His story,” my young mind was blown away by the truth of the thought. It awakened a deep sense of awe at God’s providence. It suddenly made those painful and seemingly chance things in life, the things that we can’t make sense of or find meaning in, have a future explanation. Suddenly, even the ugly things had purpose. Even the pesty ants and spring allergies and migraines were written into the book for a reason—a good reason, too. But, sadly, now, whenever I hear a pastor or teacher say that phrase, I roll my eyes a little or just let it go in one ear and out the other, because now it just feels like a clever play on words rather than a deeply profound and personal quality of God’s provision. Epiphanies are like shoes in that way: they wear out from constant use. They strike us upon first encounter as something marvelous, as something outstanding that we can’t possibly forget or take for granted, but then time goes by, and then we hear them repeatedly, and our senses become dulled.
Oh LORD, enamor our ears with this truth as You once did! Awaken our souls to the marvel that you’ve already written every single moment of our lives in Your book! Let us walk for a moment down those boundless corridors of that heavenly library, where bookshelves tower to the clouds as far and as wide as our eyes can see, and let us read the names of the millions upon millions of saints who’ve impacted our own lives without our knowing. Fill us afresh with the knowledge that all these life stories, from the short to the long, from the tragic to the comic, from the mundane to the monumental, connect to each other in unbroken prose, and show us that our day today is another significant chapter in Your gospel of grace!
Amen.