A Good Story

a devotional for spring

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Thank you for joining us!

Before we begin our devotional, I wanted to share a Comment Highlight from last week:

First of all, THANK YOU to everyone for engaging so much and so well this week! I appreciate it so much more than I can say, and I am inspired by ALL of your great comments and discussions!

I would like to highlight this wonderful reminder that Judy Ringle left on our essay last week, about how grateful I am for the return of my gardening enthusiasm:

And don't forget - where other creation stories involve battles, dismemberments, and ghastly atrocities, our God planted a garden, and placed Adam and Eve in it to tend it.

I LOVE being reminded of God’s gardening heart, Judy! Thank you so much for sharing this with us!

If you want a chance to be featured in next week’s Comment Highlight, all you have to do is post a comment on any of this week’s posts or threads. That’s it!

Now, on with this week’s devotional…

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my life is a good story

with an imperfect protagonist
and a God over my head
and beneath my feet
and around, 
all around!

a good story, 
good because it is good,
good because it is God's;

the Author writes His tales with my travels
as I bumble through this weary world

open-eyed
and ready
for every new chapter.

So far, most of my thirties has been spent trying to get back into reading books for fun. Somewhere along the line I lost the ease with which I used to pick up a book and just read, just savor for hours and hours.

I’ve discovered that I like to listen to nonfiction on audiobook—easy to listen to while I do other tasks—but I still prefer to read fiction for myself. I don’t like someone else’s voice getting in the way of my imagination. But choosing to put down my phone or step away from the computer and pick up a physical book is still a challenge, some days. I often lack the focus. But still, I try, and these pockets of time—just a good book and my vivid imagination—are precious to me.

I may not read a huge quantity of books, but I do like to read widely. My theater professor in college was the first Christian authority figure who ever flat-out told me that the things of God can be found in almost every story, if you just look hard enough. Even the stories that are often deemed silly, or depressing, or disturbing, or unvirtuous…God can be found there, or His character can be made obvious through His absence. This was my professor’s reasoning behind so many of the plays that we studied and performed, some of which were more controversial at a Christian university than others.

This outlook changed the way I look at stories, permanently. It made me read more widely, unafraid that I would stray too far and lose God, somewhere. Knowing I would find His truth in every piece of art I encountered—even if I had to look really, really hard—meant that I had no reason to worry. I would never walk so far that He would not be there, somewhere, in the complexities of what I was reading.

My life is a good story. Not because it is always joyous or smooth or “successful” by the world’s standards, but because God is in it. My goal is only that those who “read” the story of my life don’t have to look too hard to see Him.

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Thank you for reading!

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