Your story
Who writes your story?
There is a strong voice in modern culture that promises me the power to write my own story. As if life was a blank page and I have a beautiful fountain pen and can just set to it.
Like any alluring lie, it contains some truth. Our choices matter. Foolish choices can set a life on a trajectory to disaster and good choices form not only our circumstances but us too.
But life is not under our control. In the wealthy west, we can imagine it is, but the future is like the weather, the long-term prospects are harder to predict. In a moment, a life can be snatched away. In a moment, interest rates can rise. In a moment, other people’s choices can affect my story. In a moment, my own choices go awry. My handwriting is dreadful and there are inkblots on my page.
I have had days in the last years when I've said, “I don’t want this story. Being widowed wasn’t on my life-plan”. God has helped me build a new life and I am discovering this new story has unexpected joys (not least a granddaughter on the way) but what is clear is that I am not in control.
God is. The beginning and the end of the story belong to God.
There is deep reassurance in discovering that my story begun with him. Paul says that we were chosen in Christ BEFORE the universe was made. You and I have been in the mind of God for hundreds and thousands of years, across the breadth of eternity. I love looking up at the stars on these June nights, my eyes spanning light-years, filled with wonder that I have been known and loved since before the galaxies were formed.
You were not a late addition to his plan. He didn’t hear you searching for him and think, “Oh, I need an extra helper on my team”. John says that he loved you first (1 John 4:19). His love came before yours.
He saw you BEFORE you saw him. When Nathanael first met Jesus, he couldn’t work out how Jesus knew his name and asked, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered, “BEFORE Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” (John 1:48)
BEFORE our story began, God knew us. BEFORE the human story began, God was already ready to enter into its pages, to come in person in Christ to be with us in all our mess and pain, ready to shed the blood to wash every page clean.
It means we can trust God with our story today, inviting him to be with us by His Spirit, whatever our story holds, helping us to choose him.
It means we can trust God with the end of our story – he is the end of the great story and the end of the story is joy.
May you know that your story is held in God’s story today, the one who has known you and loved from all eternity and who will love you forever more.
