My Story

I was reading a great article today in the Harvard Business Review and came across a great quote that made me think. The author, John Barth said, "The story of your life is not your life. It is your story." So I stopped and thought for a while. Is the story of my life, my story, or should it really be God's story in me? As a follower of Jesus, I think my story should really be a story of God and how God's story is worked out in my life.

As I reflect on my life and my story, I can see how God has been intergal in it and how God has shown up and is showing up, when I let Him. My life is really the story of God's grace in my life and how God has worked in my life, changing me and allowing me to become more like Him. My story is not without pain, lonliness, difficulty and uncertainity in the midst of life, and yet in each part of the journey that I am walking in day by day, God is there. God is there to hear my cries and my pain, God is there to comfort, God is there to rejoice and celebrate with us and God is there in those moments of loneliness and pain, when I wonder where everyone else is, that I think should be there for me.

The journey of this life, as a Christ follower, is to know Christ and the power of His resurrection (Phil 3:10). To know Christ, is to know the pain and lonliness that He felt at times, to know that you are misunderstood, to know that your life is not really about you at all, but for a higher purpose, a Kingdom purpose. Please understand me, I am not saying that I am close to being like Jesus - far from it. I fail daily in many areas of my life, failures that allow me to see the grace and love of God all over again and again. But to know Christ, means we must also know pain, lonliness and difficulty - why? So we know how to forgive, to forgive allows us to experience a deeper walk with God and I believe help us truly understand a little bit of what does with us everyday when we fail Him. I am so thankful for God's presence in my life, and for the privilege it is to know Him deeper. I do not like the pain that comes with that sometimes, but at the end of the day, I know my story is not about me, it is about God, and my prayer is that today, God would be honoured and glorified in my thoughts, actions, words and prayers. And I pray that others will see God in me and the longing that I have to know God in a deeper way.

Just for today, I will thank God for the journey that I am experiencing and have experienced, for that journey, is allowing God to write His story into my story. To God Be the Glory. Amen.