Have you ever felt as though you ended up in the middle of a story, but you don’t know how you got there? Like you were thrown into a cast of characters, who, despite your best efforts, remain a mystery to you? Like you were parachuted into a plot, but figuring out what advances it positively and what escalates conflict, leaves your head spinning?
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love getting caught up in a good story! I love shouting at my TV. “Don’t open that door! You can’t see what’s behind it, but I can, and trust me, that’s a door better left closed.” I love defending the unlikely hero. “Don’t be mean to them! You don’t see it yet, but they’re the one person who has your back.”
Experiencing entertainment from the perspective of the omniscient narrator is fun. Knowing what they know—seeing characters’ motives, discerning good guys from bad, understanding plot enough to foresee when something looks bad but will turn out good, or looks good but isn’t—it’s a great source of entertainment.
But it’s not real life. In real life, there’s no director walking me through the storyboard at the beginning of each week so I’m well oriented before I begin. There’s no producer sitting down to explain the cast of characters to me. Acting coaches won’t be showing up to tell me when is a good time to laugh and when it’s better to cry. Goodness knows, there’s no stage manager advising me which doors to open and which to leave closed. I don’t get to decide the beginning or the end, and that means I can’t control what unfolds in the middle. In large part, I don’t pick my cast of characters or have the ability to delegate favourites into main roles and relegate others into supporting ones.
I’m not the author. And I’m not the all-knowing narrator, either. I can’t see my whole story. But, and it’s another big one, the Author of the story knows me, and He invites me to know Him. He knows the plot. He wrote the end with the beginning so He has the middle all worked out. Best of all, He’s given us the script outline, and He’s walking us through every second of the drama.
Reading Psalm 37 the other day, three phrases stuck out to me:
I can’t help but wonder, how much of my life I would stop fretting over if I truly understood that I wasn’t the author? How much anxiety would slip away if I trusted the One who is? What if, I left the story writing to Him and lived my part, believing that in just a little while, the details would be clear? What if I had the sure hope that all of my story—even the parts I don’t understand, the painful parts—would work out for good?
The Author of the story is also the hero of The Story. I don’t need to worry. I can trust that no part of it is beyond His knowledge or understanding. And in just a little while, at just the right time, He will ride in and save the day.
When the cast of characters in my story gets messy, in just a little while . . .
Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.
Trust in the Lord, and do good.
When the plot-line of my story becomes hard or confusing, in just a little while . . .
Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.
Trust in the Lord, and do good.
