I am with you always, to the very end of the age. -MATTHEW 28:20

I remember a college professor asking our class about the singular, unifying trait that all great stories share. After we ventured guesses, offering a lot of answers that frustrated him, he gave us his answer: “the plight of the individual.”

Note that word:
plight.
It’s about struggle and danger and misfortune. A story really isn’t a story without something that has to be overcome. The greater the task in overcoming, the more compelling the story is. So, crossing a small pond in a rowboat is a far less interesting tale than surviving in the open ocean after a being tossed overboard by massive waves.

This is why, when we tell our “small pond stories” we have to create greater drama than the truth. We have a need to make the stories that occupy our lives seem a bit more adventurous and daring, because we want to be adventurous and daring people. And at the same time, there are so many moments in our lives, where the degree of danger we’ve faced in our past or are presently facing is not merely an exaggeration for a story’s sake. We don’t make it up to impress anyone. The pain is real. The obstacles are real. The suffering has gone on too long. For a lot of us, we’d trade our capsized-in-the-stormy-seas-story for a boring afternoon in rented kayak on a man-made lake any day.

Beneath all of the suffering and the trial, is a longing. We want to know that whatever the journey may be — through all the darkness and fear — that it has some kind of redemptive value. The only inexcusable outcome of our story isn’t that the struggle lingers beyond its due, it’s that the struggle might wind up meaning nothing at all. This is where Jesus steps in powerfully. This is also where the church (the people who follow Him) joins Him in His work. We are met by Jesus in the midst of the struggle (though we often fail to recognize His presence among us) and we come face to face with the reality that God never wastes a hurt, a pain, or a trial. In some way often unknown to us and unseen until many years later, God uses the things that threaten to undo us, to reveal something beautiful and joyful that could not have been there otherwise.

This week, as we continue in our series: OH, THE PLACES WE’LL GO!, we’ll look at the places where we get stuck, some of the things that keep us there, and some of the ways God releases us from them. If you know people who are stuck, or you’re stuck yourself, this will be a great Sunday to invite them to join you.

See you Sunday,
Jeff