We’ve been out for the day today with friends. On the way home we started talking about our pasts, primarily about the food that we used to eat.
I’m not sure why it was food that got us talking about bygone days but it was the trigger to all sorts of reminiscing.
Sue’s dad has been talking for a while about recording some of his stories. We’ve heard many of them before, but there is no permanent record of them. He wants to record them as a kind of history of a life that no longer exists.
We each have a history that is punctuated by stories that contribute to our personality and character.
They aren’t just my stories though, I share them with the other people involved in the events. On our day we were looking at the story of Elkanah, Ramah and Hannah (1 Samuel 1). The star of this story is Hannah, but that doesn’t make Elkanah and Ramah redundant.
This story has twists and turns, results in the birth of Samuel one of the greatest of Israel’s prophets. I don’t think that any of the stories that I am living are quite that significant, but they may be, who am I to know?
Hannah’s story has survived thousands of years; I don’t expect mine to have such a long life. Again, I don’t know that they won’t, I just don’t think that they will.
Whether my stories are nationally significant or have millennial longevity doesn’t really matter. These are my stories and that’s enough, they are part of who I am and for the most part I regard them as a blessing.
I’ve been thinking about how to live a good story. For a long while I thought that a good story came as the result of success. I wouldn’t have said that success was my motivator if you’d asked me, but my actions said something different. The better story that I am now trying to live is one of a follower because a good story comes from faithfulness.
“We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn’t mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It’s a good calling, then, to speak a better story. How brightly a better story shines. How easily the world looks to it in wonder. How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat them.”
Donald Miller
(I’ve been thinking about writing some of my stories on this blog as a bit of an occasional series)
Graham Chastney 