Donald Miller said “Your life is a blank page. You write on it”. Yes, your life is a story. What you do or don’t do in the day-to-day does have an impact on the people who “read” it.  At the beginning of your life-story you may have loved the foreword or introduction as everyone seemed to like you and the wind blew in circumstances that made you feel good. You told yourself, “Life is good”.

You then wake up one day and feel the cold rain and experience a season of loss. You start detesting those long chapters.  You become numb for awhile and cannot muster the strength to turn the page. Consequently, you eventually try and try to re-write those chapters, but you look in the mirror and a voice says “You are not the Author”. You are also bothered by the voice in your head that will not shut-up “Is everything about you?”

Miller provides even more wisdom “If I have a hope, it’s that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, Enjoy your place in my story.  The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you.” (A Million Miles in a Thousand Years)

Some folks like to skip ahead to the end of a book to discover how the story will end. Every good story ends just like our very lives. Some of us live short stories.  Some of us do not. Regardless, we attempt to live like tomorrow is promised. The ancient author James offers some insight:

“Look here, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year.  We will do business there and make a profit.” How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like a morning fog-it’s here a little while, then it’s gone.  What you ought to say is, If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that”. (4:13-15 NLT)

Maybe you are thinking, “Nelson that sounds so put together.”  Since I do not have it all together I pray the following quite often:

“God I desire your will, please show me if I should ______________________________________”.

Singer and songwriter Rich Mullins’ story ended at age 41 when he was thrown from his jeep.  He was not wearing a seat belt. During his career he wrote more than 90 songs. His song “Hold Me Jesus” always ministers to my soul.  “Sometimes my life just don’t make sense at all, when the mountains look so big and my faith just seems so small. So hold me Jesus ‘cause I’m shaking like a leaf. You have been King of my glory, won’t you be my Prince of Peace.” Why not lean into the Author and let Him continue to write your story?

pictures courtesy of “Nelson & his Nikon”.