Think back through your life for a moment. Remember when you graduated from high school. Remember when you moved to the place you currently live. Remember the time you achieved something you've hard for. All of these moments and memories make up what we call our life. A string of moments leading from the past to our present reality. They make us who we are and bear heavy on our present course in life. But do these moments, these autonomous events, really capture the flow of our life story? Could we understand any one of our stories on their own, outside the context of our entire life story? Don't our passions, our past, and our dreams feed into each of these stories? Don't other stories feed into the next?
Recently in Core we were talking about one particular kind of story. Call it our "conversion story" or our "testimony" but it is the moment in our life when we made a decision to begin a relationship with God. We looked at the "conversion stories" of several other people in the Bible. But, as we read these stories, something seemed to be missing. Anxiety, fear, and hatred were evident but unexplained in the story. It was only when we looked back in the story, at the events leading up to the moment they started following God, that we saw everything in context. We saw the path their life story had taken toward God.
Whether its a symptom of our culture or our nature, we are event-based people. We tend to think of stories as autonomous units but in doing so we risk losing sight of the larger Story that all of these events fit into. In the same way, we must not see our relationship with God simply as a single event that happened but as a series of events that form a story leading us to God.
Why is this important? Because we begin to appreciate elements of our story we previously thought were insignificant. We see a story, beautiful in all of complexity and richness. We appreciate all of the things that God did (and is doing) in our lives to lead us to him.
Because, surely our journey toward God is not over when we make the decision to follow him. The event marks a major turn in the story but, as followers of God, we must appreciate the story he's woven so far enough to continue it. So my meditation today is two-fold. For the seeker I would submit that not one moment in your life is insignificant. It is all, hopefully, leading you toward God. Every conversation, conflict, and conquest leads you closer to God if you pay close enough attention to the Storyline. For the Jesus follower I would submit that your journey is far from over. In fact, with your newfound knowledge of and commitment to God you should be all the more motivated to journey toward him. Like any good relationship, once you meet someone, the real work of getting to know them begins.
So let me encourage you today, not to let the journey begin, but to let the journey continue...
