The Stories We Tell

We all tell stories: about who we are, where we’re from, who our family is. We write people into our stories and are written into the stories of others every day. The roles may be big or small, long-term recurring roles or short-term guest appearances. The size and length of the role doesn’t matter necessarily, but the impact does. And honestly, we want to write people into our stories and to be written into theirs.

One of my favorite musicians was Rich Mullins. He wrote honest, beautiful songs that didn’t always fit neatly into the Contemporary Christian Music scene. He was honest about his struggles with faith and doubt. He talked about what the Church was supposed to be versus what it seemed to be. And he was upfront about his daily need for God’s grace in his life. Tragically, he was killed in a car accident on September 19, 1997, near Bloomington, Illinois.

Before his death, he recorded nine demos for his next project, simply titled “The Jesus Record”. He went into an old church, sat down at the piano with his recorder, and began to play and sing the songs for the record. The chorus to the song Jesus is the heart cry of every Jesus follower:

Jesus, write me into Your story
Whisper it to me
And let me know I'm Yours

I have been thinking about the first line of that chorus for the past few months. I have thought about the fact that as much as we might hope to be written into someone’s story, to write others into our story, getting to have a part in Jesus’s story is far and away the thing I desire most. Being a part of this story means that I get to be part of passing the story to future generations.

That is what we do when we write new people into our own stories: we are passing the story - of family, of friends, of life, of hope, of heartbreak - along to be shared with others.

So, may we never forget the stories that have made us who we are, and may we continue to write others into our story and to be written into the stories of others, and may we be faithful within the part of the story that Jesus has written for us.

Grace & Peace y’all
Blake