The Story of Your Life

In our Tuesday morning men's Bible study/breakfast we have been reading and discussing our way through Genesis.  Whenever I approach the narrative sections of Scripture, the preacher mode kicks in and I look for the theological angle.  I try to consistently ask,

What does this reveal about God and/or His Kingdom?

This strategy has been powerful for crafting sermons, sculpting lessons, and even for shaping my personal life.  But our weekly discussions have helped me re-discover one gem-like paradigm.  These are the lives of people.

No, you didn't miss something.  I didn't accidentally delete a prophetic insight.  That is it.  In Genesis, and in so much of the Bible, I am reading the stories of men, women and children, much like me (minus ancient and eastern culture).

Between the slices of bread we call life and death, are the deli meats and condiments of everyday stuff.  People dream, and they disagree.  Greed erupts and, occasionally, compassion is the hero.  Deception makes numerous appearances.  Deals are made for goods and land and mercy.  Families fight.  They also relocate.  With them, we celebrate marriages and births.  And alongside them, we mourn betrayals and death.

The storyteller supplies us their names, their ages, their addresses (sort of), and even their conversations.  He paints their joy, rage, doubt, fear, hope, confusion, anticipation, relief and fatigue.  In those pages we feel the heat of the midday sun.  We feel the breeze and see the dust.  We smell the livestock and taste the honey.  We blush at the sight of indiscretion.  We hear the thunder and feel the tremors.  Their story becomes our story.

And right in the middle of life, God appears.  Sometimes visibly, sometimes audibly, often just cloaked in the mystery of life.  But He is there on every page.  While Isaac is scraping sheep dung from his sandal, or Joseph is marking another day off on the prison wall, God sits next to them with another invitation.  Stories intersect.  It is still their story, but it has been engulfed in God's story.

When I miss that simple point, I miss something huge.  My life will never be filled with voices from heaven, descending angels, walking firepots, parted seas and giant-killing.  My life-story will be fairly ordinary.  But in the ordinary God is waiting.  He is waiting for His story to be the context of my story.

Live your life.  And pay attention.  You have a featured role in God's drama.