AfterWords – “Writing New Stories”

 

    Our lives are stories. Some chapters move and flow; some chapters seem stuck or slow. We write characters into our lives, and we write characters out of our lives. Our parents wrote the early chapters of our lives, taught us how to write along the way, and by the time we moved into adolescence, we were taking the pen from their hands and beginning to write our chapters. Once we had the pen in our own hands, our lives were our own…for better or worse.

     We have written some really nice scenes or chapters into our lives—some things we did well, some conversations that were fun, thoughtful, life-giving. We discovered some good characters to include in our stories. But, we also have chapters of regret. We have woven some damaging scenes into our lives, and we have written some bad characters into our lives. Inevitably, we come to points in life when we realize that past scenes and actions have captured us and hold us back. We recognize that some of the characters we’ve written into our lives need to get out, and we don’t know how to write them out. All is not lost.

     The writer of Hebrews refers to Jesus as “the author and finisher of our faith” (12:2). Could it be that now is the time to invite the Author into our lives again, to share the pen with him, to allow him to guide us into writing new and better scenes, fresh conversations, and to write the bad characters out of our lives? We already know what kind of tale we get when we do all of the writing ourselves. Now, today, let us invite Jesus, author and finisher of our faith, to join us in our life-story, to help us write new stories…stories of meaning and purpose and direction, stories that others can watch unfold and can celebrate when we’re gone.

"Writing New Stories" 
 Sunday, July 7, 2024