Who Is Telling Your Story?
“For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”
Ephesians 2:10
Storytelling is as old as humanity. We tell stories of romance, adventure and of hardships overcome. From children’s books to stories we see told on the big screen at movie theaters, from poetry to paintings, at the heart of our humanity is a desire to communicate through stories.
There are also the stories we tell ourselves: stories we hear and imbibe from others, stories about who we are, stories about where we are from. We interpret events and experiences and piece them together as best we know how to make sense of them. We take the data of our lives and piece them into a narrative that gives meaning and understanding to the world around us.
Yet, the stories we put together are at our mercy and emotions. Lisa Feldman Barrett, a psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School, talks about how emotions are essentially predictions that are based on our experiences. For example, if in the past a certain event left us sad or angry, a similar event today would invoke the same emotions. Our brains are wired to do this. It is a protective instinct and our brain’s way of navigating the world. Feldman Barrett goes on to talk about how it is possible to affect and redirect our emotional responses, as although two events might be similar that does not mean the same emotional response is warranted.
If we are the author of our stories (of ourselves or those around us), then we are at the mercy of one who can take imaginative leaps and…make mistakes driven by our experiences, our emotions and quite probably our sin.
Yet, what if we were to let God rewrite our stories? What if we were to stop labeling the people and events in our experience and see what God does with it? In Christ, we have been born again. We are part of God’s new creation, and He has a big, big story of redemption. It is not just about your or my salvation. It is a story in which no one escapes sin or culpability. It is a story both of mercy and of justice. If you are tired of the stories you are listening to or telling, I invite you to turn to the One who can take your experiences, both good and bad, and weave them into a much better story than we could ever tell: a heavenly story and a story of real hope.
