Beyond the Stop

I often wonder about things like destiny and tension and climbing mountains. I wonder about the person with a great destiny and about the things in his or her life that start making it uncomfortable...that start making reality harder than a dream. I wonder about the people woven into that destiny and the challenges ripping into it as well. I wonder about stories, basically... But I'm wondering about them more right now. It's funny, because in the story of my own life, this topic has been coming up a lot. I was away awhile, and during that time, I picked up the book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. I heard it was good, and I like Donald Miller, so I thought it'd be worth the fifteen bucks. It was. It's a good book... and it's mostly about stories.

A few Sundays ago at the Stirring, I could tell that I wasn't the only one reading that book... Aaron Hayes talked about Luke 5:1-11, which shows Jesus pulling some fisherman out of their frustrating, mediocre stories and into the bigger story he was starting to tell with them. Jesus moves them "from a life of occupation to a life of mission... from lives of obligation to lives of meaning and purpose." I really resonated with what Aaron said there, because until you realize that Jesus wants to tell a great story with your life, whatever you're trying to "keep up with" outside of that is inevitably going to expose your inadequacies and always highlight your failures. But Jesus' story doesn't leave you at inadequacies and failures... it calls you THROUGH them. Because the point of His story is not your competence or successes... the point of His story is your transformation - your transformation that comes because He is competent and successful at loving you, calling you, and pulling you through, if you let Him.

You see, I watch a lot of movies, and I get wrapped up in a lot of stories. And I was thinking the other day that the stories I get the most wrapped up in are the ones that have the best character development. I could watch a really "boring" movie or the most action-packed thriller in the world, but if I fall in love with a character, all I really end up caring about is how they are going to be throughout the movie. And I don't care if the conflict is about world-rescue or relational-redemption, if the character is determined to move through the conflict and come out changed for the better, I'm all over that! But here is the thing that matters most to me - here is the thing the makes the difference... If the CONFLICT ITSELF WINS... if the character receives nothing, learns nothing, surrenders nothing, moves nothing... if they give in to everything the story had mounted against them... that movie sucks. I would hate to watch a movie that only says, "There was once this man who was caught up in something that was ruining his life and his heart. He started fighting against this thing, because he had to or he would die. He got close to getting through it a couple times, and it seemed like he was changing, but then he went back to where he started... and even worse... and then he died." The conflict wins in a movie like that. And I don't think Jesus made us to have lives where conflict wins. He says we will have conflict. The deep conflict is where the deep victory is possible (like Aaron was saying). But, "take heart"...because Jesus has overcome a WORLD of it.

If we join Jesus' story, we overcome conflict, too. We go through it, like Jesus did (but we do it on a smaller scale because we don't have to go through the battle of defeating EVERYONE's sins)... and we come out on the other end risen and changed, because something is new in us now.

I don't think a story is complete until conflict is defeated. The kind of movie I mentioned before - the one where the man is defeated by his conflict - it's worse than, "Oh, that movie has a bad ending" - I don't think that movie really has an ending... I think that movie just stops.

And who likes to watch a movie that just stops?


When I said earlier that I wonder about things like destiny and tension and climbing mountains... that I wonder about the person with a great destiny and about the things in life that start making it uncomfortable and about the people woven into that destiny and the challenges in it as well... I guess I'm really wondering about the meaning that all those elements have. And I guess I'm wondering if they mean anything at all if the story doesn't pull them through something in the end. I'm wondering if they are all just pieces, floating around on paper or on a screen (or in a life), waiting to find their weight in the end... waiting to have their worth completed when the Author says, "This was how you moved my story along." How beautiful, if the main character lets the story be written like that, and lets the elements come into the fullness of that. How incomplete, if the conflict just stops him -