Story Time

I about half way through "The Catcher in the Rye". I started it because I wanted to see what the fuss was about and it was a couple dollars at Walmart. At the beginning the main character Holden gets kicked out of his boarding school. And the headmaster lets him know life is game and we have to play by the rules. Holden wasn't that is why he was kicked out. Is life a game? Get what you can because tomorrow we die. It sucks for those born without anything, doesn't seem like a fair start. I often play the game, get the right degree, take care of your body or make smart money decisions, and I will succeed. But what about disaster, cancer, and worldwide economic failure then good desicions don't matter as much.

God says it is more than a game; more of story we are living in. God, not as a puppetmaster controling every aspect of our lives, but more like a director taking whatever fate gives us and infusing it with life to enrich the great story. God's story has always been a story of love and redemption. The story began with Adam and Eve getting clothes so they would not be ashamed anymore of their eating mistake, continuing with Jesus death on the cross. Right up to present day where mistakes like eating disorders, acolohol, and sexual impurity can be redeemed through Jesus to change and grow new life in others dealing with those struggles.

Fredrick Buechner writes that:

"Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally."

God is active in our lives if we would look for Him in every circumstance. Often we close our eyes to God and open them to other things, like Romans 1 says, exchange the truth of God for a lie, and worship and serve created things rather than the Creator. In other words, continue to treat life like a game competing with others, pursuing stuff, and trying to win.

Jesus is calling you to come and die to the game and live in the story. Jesus desires to join our lives and take over to redeem all the past mistakes if we believe in Him. Only when you find something worth dying for do you truly live.

Jesus to you all the Glory! amen.