A Good Story

The best stories start with lines like “once upon a time,” or “a long, long time ago.”  They start with lines like “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” or “my grandmother had just gotten out of jail.”  Those are the ways to start great stories.

But anyone can start a story, what’s really hard is endings.  I like to read stories, you know,  novels and such.  One of my favorite authors tells great stories, especially at the beginning, but he has trouble with his endings.  They always seem to be a little, well, disappointing.

I’ve had several conversations within the past week or so about something that really makes me sad for other people.  I watch them start their stories well, the stories of their own lives, and yet somewhere along the way things take an unfortunate turn.  Sometimes these are choices that they make, sometimes things that happen to them.  What seems to happen in so many lives is that they have this plot twist, and all of a sudden the whole story changes.  And they get to their ending, and that person never seems to recover.  They never understand that a different choice could change everything.  They don’t see that if their attitude could change then it would move the story in a whole new direction.  But ultimately, they reach the end of their story and they never “get it.”  They never make the change that life is requiring of them.  In good stories, characters arc, they learn lessons and grow as people.  And while we shouldn’t expect life to be like a movie all the time, this is one element of story that I believe God wants for our lives.  He wants us to grow, to change, to arc and become more like Him.

The big churchy word for it is “sanctification.”

I call it telling a good story.