Written by Dawn Rutan
This is a slightly different post from usual. I mentioned in my last post that I’d picked up four random books from the library, never expecting them to share a theme. Here are three quotes that struck me as I read:
Mourning Into Dancing, by Walter Wangerin – “Talitha [his daughter], in order to end in love with your self, start with God. Love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. Trust him completely. Obey him. And then, in perfect trust, know this: that whatever God makes is beautiful. Whatever God loves is lovely, just because he loves it. And whoever lives within his will is full of grace and favor. Daughter, perfect hands have fashioned you. And God loves you, Talitha, so much that he sent his Son to save you” (58-59).
Confessions of a Caffeinated Christian, by John Fischer – After sharing with a psychologist the story of his difficult birth and near death, the psychologist said, “‘John, do you know what that means? … That means that God wanted you to live! …Well, that’s a pretty big deal.’ So that was it all along. God wanted me alive and breathing. He wanted me. I am alive, not because of what I did, or was going to do, or how I got here. I am alive, period, and suddenly that alone became a pretty big deal” (6).
Bring Back the Joy, by Sheila Walsh – “When you love God you love the things God loves. God loves you. It’s embarrassing and uncomfortable to be loved when we feel that we should be despised, but God is God… Saint Bernard of Clairvaux charts out four steps we take in the process of losing ourselves and finding ourselves in God…
Step 1. We love ourselves for our own sake.
Step 2. We love God for our own sake.
Step 3. We love God for his sake.
Step 4. We love ourselves for God’s sake” (90).
It’s evident from these quotes that I’m not the only one who needs to be reminded that my life matters because God has created me and loves me as His child. The fourth book I picked up indicates one thing we are to do with that knowledge:
To Be Told, by Dan Allender – “We are God’s story, which means we are expertly written. We are called to write our story with God in order to bring him more glory. We write our story best by giving our heart away to others whom we honor as more important than ourselves. What we give to others is a unique story, a theme that reveals God like no other story can… Since our stories reveal God, no story is ours alone… But our story does not need to be told to everyone, even the most intimate friends. We are to be guardians of our story, and it is to be given as a gift—not wantonly but carefully. It is a gift to be given only to the right person at the right time for the right reason” (209-210).
God has granted us life, and unique events have shaped us into the people we are today and who we will be tomorrow. Our stories are the one thing we can claim as our own. Possessions may be lost; jobs come to an end; people can steal our pride and security; relationships can end for numerous reasons including sin and death. But through it all we have the story of how God has used all our circumstances to shape us. We can hide our stories out of shame and fear, or we can share them at the right times to give God glory and to encourage others, as well as to receive encouragement from others.
“You have multiplied, O Lord my God, Your wondrous deeds and Your thoughts toward us; none can compare with You! I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told.” –Psalm 40:5
