story lines.

Do you ever just sit back and wonder about the Story that's being written with your life?

I don't know, maybe it's something about the writer in me and the connection to viewing life in story lines, but it's a question I often stumble upon, often find myself chewing on.  It's a question for me that sometimes surfaces when life breathes mystery and excitement and the power of the unknown lies in its ability to overwhelmingly surprise you in ways you could never have imagined.  It's a powerful, heady experience and the Story feels so much bigger than you.  And your place in the story feels significant...purposeful.

And then there are seasons, like now, where the question of What's the Story being written with my life? has a weight to it that is hard to describe.  Fear tugs at my heart.  I guess I fear the reality that what's really being written by my life is the Story I would not intentionally set about to write on my own.  It's a Story that seems is being written...with or without my help.  It's a powerful Story.  And it's power, it seems, lies in its ability to out my selfishness.  Looking in the face of my selfishness makes me feel weak, vulnerable, and exposed.

Recently I have been reading a book by a most-beloved author, Paula Rinehart (a woman who seems like a dear friend in her ability to pose good questions), who was pondering the idea of "resting in the shade of God's sovereignty."  Essentially she points out that the attention we give to second guessing the journey of arriving at our present can leave us in one of several places:   

• That there's a perfect path to be found and there will be an emotional proof that we've finally discovered it.  End result:  living cautiously and tentatively, fearing that the next choice could just be the one that unravels it all. 
• Living in the realm of regret and second guessing about our journeys can leave us positioning ourselves with a stance of "it all depends upon me."  In other words, in looking back and questioning our path or entertaing certain regrets, we come to believe that it was all up to us anyway.  Whatever did or didn't happen along the way was a direct result of our failure to make it happen -- something she calls being a Christian who lives like an atheist.  "How sad," she comments, "to live like an atheist with the gospel at my fingertips."  Living in the past regrets of what-if often leaves us paralyzed in the present. "The truth is," she says, "if it all depends on us, we are in worse trouble than we think."

The phrase has been often used, "Hindsight is twenty-twenty."  And yet, for the believer, is it really?  I cannot help but think that even hindsight is limited in its scope.  In looking back upon a journey -- full of it's pains, indecsions, choices, sins, failings, joys -- can we not find ourselves wrestling with a limited perspective?  If, by hindsight, I am merely looking to those circumstances with the view that present knowledge would achieve some different present result, am I really looking at the God who sees all...the God who has a perspective on my journey that I do not...the God who is not thrown off guard by my failures or choices?  Indeed, I must believe that He is much bigger than I!  If I am a woman resting in the sovereignty of God, can I say that hindsight would cause me to do anything differently than where life finds me now?  

Rather, Rinehart poses this question:  "How am I going to allow the detours and the lost years and the mistakes to take their proper place in a life that is, somehow, being orchestrated by a God who loves me?  Can I let myself accept that I am living a directed life even when I am floundering?" 

At it's very heart, the answer to this question must embrace the very significant fact that God is good. Deeply good.  Isn't that the lens I'm being asked to perceive life through?  Resting in His sovereignty has at the very heart of it a rest in the goodness of God. Rinehart mentions a quote by Jim Elliot that also had a significant impact on me during my college years:

"What is, is actual--what might be simply is not, and I must not therefore query God as though he robbed me--of things that are not...[the] things that are belong to us, and they are good, God-given and enriched."

Even now, years later, that quote still gives me goosebumps!  And yet, how much more meaningful to a woman who has some life under belt and hindsight on her heels.  What am I left with other than that where my journey finds me is exactly where He has me, you know?  My dreams and plans for my life, though I believe are God-given and good, do not belong to me.  It does not mean they never will...but they are not my past and they are not my present.  And, I fear, the failure to embrace my present -- and that He is deeply good in what is -- is the only threat to embracing my future.  

Oh that I would embrace His goodness and rest in His sovereignty...

(Thoughts and reflections on Paula Rinehart's Better Than My Dreams, Chapter 6)

Comments

[Sandie]

Such good thoughts, Blythe. This deserves pondering. My heart's desire, too, is to embrace His goodness and rest in His sovereignty!