I’d been going around for days asking myself, “So what’s the story here?”
Mainly because I read that a father had stopped asking his son after school every day, “So, how was your day?” — but instead began to simply ask him: “So – what’s the story today?” Because really?
“The definition of a good day is actually how well did you live the story you were given today.”
Every day is a story, and every day you’re writing the one story of your only life, and your life is actually part of writing history, writing His story of redemptive good into the world.
The definition of a good day is actually how well did you live the story you were given today.
You only get one story to live, and you get to write good lines into the story you’ve been given, new pages of hope, new chapters of redemption and courage and love into the story that is today.
You may not like the Story you’ve been given, but what you always get to do is write more good lines into the story.
Shiloh and I make Advent countdown cookies, 25 cookies, one for each day. I pipe icing onto each cookie, numbering them. Shiloh reads to me and I dictate her spelling words while I try to clear away my baking mayhem to find the counters. So, what’s the story – really?
You may not like the Story you’ve been given, but what you always get to do is write more good lines into the story.
I call my Mama, in these painful days after her knee surgery, and read her lines from the Psalms, as she recovers more than a couple hundred kilometres away where she lives next to my brother’s family, and she and I pray those ancient verses of the Shepherd King who talked to his sheep and his soul and his God, asking Him: “Tell my soul, “I am your salvation.”
Every soul keeps seeking salvation in all kinds of ways – but only the One who is the Word Himself is telling the truest story about how to find any saving rescue in a bent and dented world.
Mama’s on meds for the pain. She asks me how my wee flock of sheep behind the house are in these dark days of Advent. I tell her that the two lambs, Barnabas and Lovey, still keep following Shiloh around like she’s Mary, schooling them a bit more every day in love. And I tell her too, that the Farmer and I worked together late into the night mucking out one of the sheepfolds and then stood in the December dark and falling snow just quietly petting the sheep gathered round. So what’s the story, really?
And then I mention to Mama that the other day, I lost the memory card right out of my camera, somewhere walking in from the barn.
I had slowly retraced my steps through the half foot of sloshy snow.
But after two meticulous retracings, hunched over my tracks, I felt like a snowy-wet, empty-handed failure, and I told Shiloh that I give up. Plus, looked like the camera card, by that point, had been lost in the melting snow for at least the last 30 minutes now, so isn’t it likely already ruined? How many family photos and memories from the last week have I already lost?
“Only the One who is the Word Himself is telling the truest story about how to find any saving rescue in a bent and dented world.“
And as I resigned to just what is, and turned to just put the little flock of sheep back in the barn, there, right there just at my hand, right there just in the one sheep that happens to be standing just right there next to me, something glimmers a bit in the December light – and lodged just right there in this sheep’s wool – is said lost camera card.
Not in the melting snow.
Not in the mud.
Not buried in the hay, or the corn, or the straw – but there:
Buried in the snow white wool of a sheep. In particularly, the sheep who happens to be standing right next to me! So, what’s the story, really?
And then we read in our Advent readings, as we unwrap more of The Greatest Gift — that:
“In the story of God, in the family tree of Jesus, there’s not one woman, but four tired women who just keep trying – women who felt like failures, outsiders, like has-beens, like never-beens. Tamar, Ruth, Bathsheba, Rahab. The Four: All named in the family line and story of God, women who knew what it was like to be tired from trying to find the way through, women exhausted with being taken advantage of, being unnoticed, uncherished and unappreciated; women who felt like they didn’t fit in, who had to figure out how to keep going and not give up.
“The Story of every day really is that the Word is writing a good story through the day, even now.“
So what’s really the story – when your story feels messier than every one else’s?
And it’s exactly these women, The Four, the women who are wandering and wondering and weary and wounded, who Jesus claims as His, as part of His glory story.
When your story is messed up – the real story is that Hope writes Himself into your story, and He’s working more good lines into your Story and He’s always your sure lifeline.
“There is a story unfolding every day in every day — and it’s not a story of failure, but a story of faithfulness – a story of God being faithful to us, even when we are faithless.
There is a story unfolding every day — and it’s not ultimately a story of failure, but a story of faithfulness – a story of God being faithful to us, even when we are faithless, a story of God coming to us and loyally staying with us, a story of grace clearing some unexpected way, and of Hope loaning us courage, and love never abandoning us even for a second.
The Story of every day really is that the Word is writing a good story through the day, even now.
And a heart has to be hungry to see it, to slow down and really look for it – there, under the tenderness of bruised relationships, or buried there behind the laundry that’s piled up, or over there, somewhere alongside the to-do list that keeps exponentially expanding, or deep in the grief and the muck and the mess and the mire and the bruises of a life that keeps slamming us up against the rocks and the doctors and deadlines and whole long walls of disappointments – there’s still a glory story that surprises with gentle love.
So, what’s the story today? Really?
Snow’s falling out in the orchard today, dusting the backs of my wee flock of sheep. The Farmer, surprised me this morning when I went out to feed sheep — he’d already filled my small trailer with hay for their breakfast. I talked to Mama about her exercises and her pain management, while I folded the laundry, and I held space for her as she ached with all kinds of pain. We can all feel like we’re the fifth, who belongs to The Four.
“…the real story is that Hope writes Himself into your story, and He’s working more good lines into your Story and He’s always your sure lifeline.“
And yet everywhere: The realest story today is that every day is its own kind of love story, written by Love Himself. Love, who comes down to a manger, enters time, and lives a life that is is the truest love story of history — and it’s His-Story, and it’s for you.
All the other fairy tale love stories in the world only echo our yearning for this truest, realest love story – this one that has its beginning before the beginning of time — and will carry us on into forever.
The story really is — our saving rescue is here.
We can breathe.
So we stay in the Story, because there, lodged between all our moments, are always these whispers of grace.
Jesus came down — and a bit of heaven can begin now, even here.
Come let Jesus touch our broken relationships & heal us & reconcile us with His PEACE.
This Advent, Stay in the Story that the rest of your year, your family, will need.
3 Award-Winning 25 Christmas Devotionals for the Whole Family
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Best Devotional of the Year, ECPA, 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019 (pop-up tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
