Live a Better Story.

I love Donald Miller.  The first book of his I read, Blue Like Jazz, was the first book that challenged me to understand faith as my own.  As much as I loved that book, it has taken me over four years to pick up another of his works, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.  Sure enough, I came across this book while looking for another book by a different author.

God has a way with “perfect timing”.  I’ve wanted to read this book for awhile, but I don’t think I was ready for it until now.  These last few months God has occupied much of my thoughts with questions about life’s purpose and meaning, both for myself and for others.  Ironically, this is what Miller is writing about... at least that is what I believe I am reading about. 

Life (being human, purpose, meaning, whatever you want to call it) is very much like a story, it is our story.  Do we truly want our story to be simply about our pursuit of comfortable living?  Do we want our story to be simple at all?  I don’t. 

That’s where Miller’s challenge comes in.  Live a better story.  You and I, whether you believe our lives to be spoken into existence by God or not, have been given control of our own story.  The pages to our future are unwritten.  They are not written for me, and they are not written for you either.  You and I have the opportunity to write our futures, to write successes and failures, adventures and misadventures.  Or, we can write a simple story, of avoiding conflict, playing it safe, taking care of ourselves, not risking anything.  We can write a boring story, if that is what we want. 

Even though we have been called into existence for a purpose, our future is our own.  However, "writing" our story should still include learning to trust and depend fully on God’s plan for us, which I hardly doubt is a simple, comfortable, and meaningless life.  Still, He has created us for a purpose and given us the opportunity to live for something greater, live for something other than ourselves, live in faith.  This is the exciting part about being human, having the ability to make our own decisions, step out in faith, and live out the adventure that God has purposed us for.

So here is my question to you (and me).  When someone else tells our story, what will they say?  Will it be about comfortable living, free from risk?  Or will it be about struggle, conflict, and adventure?  Do you believe that God has written us into existence so that we can live comfortably, or for something more?  How will we live a better story?

Psalm 139:16

“All the days ordained for me

were written in your book

before one of them came to be.”