Our narrative as a child of God

This year I plan to have hope. I heartily hope that the spectre of COVID is behind us, however, for all of us the after effects of all that uncertainty still linger: I worry what will happen now? Will I get too confident, plan a camp or event and then have to cancel it once again? It would be great to organise a year and it stays that way! Not too much to ask, surely. But life is not like this.

Life can be a conundrum that continues to surprise us despite our best efforts. I finished last year with a sense of where did the year go? And at the same time felt that the beginning of the 2022 year, when we only had limited year levels attend school in person, seemed like an eternity ago. Although many sanctions were State Government decree, it carries through that the decisions that we, or I have made, have consequences on so many other people. We can never divorce our decisions from the faces of the people who will be influenced by them. And there are so many faces in a school. In a community. In our lives.

We all have the power of decision making every day in the home, workplace or socially. And if you think about it too much it is frightening, just like the overwhelming responsibility of raising a child – best to take it one day at a time and pray a lot! I suppose that this is an acknowledgment of the fact that we can impact many people, intentionally or unintentionally; kindly or carelessly, even cruelly.

All people have narratives, stories to tell, which are echoed in their responses to these decisions. We all deal with loss, betrayal, love, lust, intimacy, ambition, hope, death, family, work, play, money, birth, cheating, sickness, culture, country, gender, friendship, fear, loneliness, acceptance, rejection, faith… in short, the major narratives of life. Funnily, most of what we watch and read connects to us because we can see our story of these shared themes unfolding, and it can touch our journey. All of what we have around us, listen to, and remember are the stories of what we are. The stories that make us who we are. (I am so much an English teacher!) The stories that we chose, or have some choice in, and those that we inherit. Especially our family and circumstances to which we were born. As Culbertson in Caring for God’s people explains ‘When we are born, we enter stories that began without us … [we are] a new actor in an old family script.’

Our humanity is a shared condition we all experience and it is easy to misread the difficult circumstances of our life as being unfair and unique. As Scott Peck writes in The Road Less Travelled, ‘Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.’

For me this means that certainty is replaced by questions. As the psalmist says in Psalm 13 “O Lord how long will you forget me? Forever?’ Struggles and suffering are part of the human condition. Many factors in life are outside of our control, and when the tide of life turns it can be bewildering.

These questions of struggle are important and universal. For me, I hope they are about growth. It is when we have to sit back and look at the bigger picture, the God picture. It is about accepting that there may not be any answers. It is when I realise just how deep my limitations are, our limitations are. And how limited my understanding of others is. To learn to accept that we live in a theologically named zone of ‘already and not yet’ and we struggle, not because we are victims in a villainous world, but because we are humans in a fallen world. Yet there is another great truth: When we embrace these struggles and accept the difficulty of life, it might just mean that we have more capacity to understand others’ struggles.

Surely times and circumstances like this are God’s training ground for us.

As in James 1:2–4: “Count it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” (ESV)

Although it may seem counterintuitive, people usually grow the most during time of trial. I am not sure that I like this idea. But I suppose that I don’t have a choice. The ideal result is steadfastness, a life of faithful endurance amid troubles and afflictions. Or from a pragmatic point of view, bad stuff happens and, if everyone has it in their life, I can expect it too and learn from those who manage it. I can choose my approach to it.

Harris’ in The Tortoise Usually Wins summarises that ‘owning our struggles, the orientation, disorientation and reorientation cycle that most of us go through, can be a path to ensure harmony between our inner and outer world’.

We have the choice in our narrative. And from my own experience learning to put the pain, my struggles at the foot of the cross has been one of the most powerful tools for peace in my life. At one point I asked a friend, ‘But what if it keeps coming back all the time? It confronts me every day?’ The answer – put it at the foot of the cross each day.

Accepting that life is difficult and it is part of your narrative, your story, and the way forward is to learn to abide in Christ:

“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” John 15:1-11 (NASB)