Curling my little legs up to my chest, I snuggled deep into the couch, my Beauty and the Beast comforter hedging my eight-year-old self in. Book in hand, I drift out of this world and into another one filled with new people and places.
As a child, I loved the characters in my books. They were real to me, their stories playing on somewhere outside of time and space. Their victories were real, their love stories deep. And after finishing each book, I would sit there silently daydreaming of my own.
What was my story?
I knew how it started. But where was it going? Most importantly, how would it end?
For a long time, I was mesmerized by my own story. In my eyes, I was the main character and God held the pen. He was writing it, but I was starring in it.
Over time, my paradigm began to shift and I began to see that the Bible, although made up of sixty-six books, was actually one story. And God was the main character. The pages of His story were filled with powerful minor characters like Moses and David and Paul. But the main storyline wasn’t theirs, it was His. His beginning. His middle. His end.
And somewhere between the end of Jude and the beginning of Revelation was me, another minor character in the bigger story of God. My life was only a chapter, not the whole book.
I began to wonder: what if I already know the end of my story? It’s written right here, in the pages of Revelation, isn’t it? When John looks out and sees a great multitude that no one could count, I’m somewhere in that great multitude, standing beside men and women from every nation, tribe and language of the earth.
My ending isn’t quite the mystery I always thought it was.
If the end of His story were also the end of mine, would the rest of my story be in line with it? Would I get to end and think, “Hey, this doesn’t match the rest of the story at all!”
When we view our lives as being a part of God’s bigger story, we find clarity and purpose. The storyline makes a whole lot more sense because we know where we are going. From beginning to end, God is busy making Himself known among the peoples of the earth. Over and over, He uses His characters’ individual blessings for universal praise.
This theme doesn’t end in the pages of Scripture. God weaves it through the stories of the Romans and the Barbarians and the Vikings – through every page of history. Now it’s my turn. My turn to align my life and my family with what God is doing in redeeming the nations of the earth.
In the end, when I look back, I want nothing more than to be another character God wrote into His story… another follower of Jesus who walked in obedience, loving others, and doing my part in making my Savior famous among the nations.
Sitting around a world map, praying for the nations, one of my kids prays, “Jesus, thank you that even though we’re little, You let us be a part of Your story.”
And what a beautiful story it is.
