“I had always felt life first as a story and if there is a story, there is a storyteller.”
G.K. Chesterton
From the beginning of time, we have told stories, whether it has been the exploits of the day’s hunt, reciting a sonnet to the object of one’s affection, or my favourite, reading bedtime stories while snuggling with my children. Stories are powerful and are far more effective than dry narration when expressing the heartbeat of life, the heartbeat of our passionate God. In the Gospels, we see that Jesus taught and expressed the beauty of heaven, not through well-planned lessons in theology; Instead, He used the language of stories.
In a simple greeting, we ask one another. “how are you?” When what we’re really trying to understand is, “what’s going on around here?” In other words, tell me a story. Stories can bring clarity and understanding, where little or none previously existed. Stories are the stuff that unites us, be that a family, friends or an entire culture, stories have power, that in some ways, define us and provide us with purpose. Yet many of us may echo the sentiments of Samwise Gamgee when he asked a very simple and yet profound question.
“I wonder what sort of story we’ve fallen into? ”
An excellent question and one deserving of an answer for life, occasionally appear like something that we’ve fallen into and is completely outside of our own control. But just for a moment take a deep look into this theatre, we call life. Your story holds all the makings of one of the all-time legendary stories ever told. The Storyteller is creating your story as it has always been intended to be, an epic drama, and we play a crucial role on this stage that is unfolding before the universe to witness. The Storyteller of this tale has held nothing back, nothing has escaped from the production of this wondrous story, your life. Sadly, unlike the fairy tales of old, the performance that we have fallen into rarely ends ‘happily ever after.’ Yet life is no longer a fairytale that has been recited many times. No, this adventure that we are part of, is being written as we live it, and don’t try peeking at the last chapter to see how it ends for it’s still being written. Your life is a story of epic proportions. So go, live your story, your part is crucial to the entire plot, and without you, well, there’s just no story to be shared.
