My Story

I finished reading C.S.  Lewis' The Horse and His Boy yesterday.  I do love the Chronicles of Narnia for all the truth hidden in the allegories.  It is impossible to miss the meanings imbedded in these children's stories, truths that are so invaluable.  Several times in this particular book Aslan tells the characters, "I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own."  These sentences have great power, but difficult truth beneath their surfaces.

I think it is important to realize that God is about revealing our story to us.  In His own time, in His own manner.  But I think it is extremely difficult for us to embrace the truth that we don't need to know the stories of others.  Or at least, it is extremely difficult for me to embrace. I enjoy being a part of others stories, I love inviting others into my story.  Yet God doesn't have to reveal their stories to me.  It's not my place to know the stories of others.  If they choose to share it with me, I should consider myself blessed, but I don't have to know it all.

Sometimes in our quest for knowledge, this insatiable thirst that is essential to growing and changing, we seek to know things that are not for us to understand.  It's almost the same idea as gossip; we want to know claiming that knowledge isn't a bad thing.  But sometimes the knowing can be hurtful or isn't any of our business.  Where I struggle is in the balance of things.  How do we determine knowledge that is for our refinement and edification?  How do we know where to stop, the line we should not cross?  How do we know the times when we should ask the hard questions of a friend and when we should back off?  How do we know?

Maybe the lesson is that it's not about our knowing but rather about our discerning.  It is less about the facts we can spew and more about the guiding voice we hear.  I'm finding more and more that the answer lies in intimacy with God, in hearing the shepherd's voice.  I need to rely on Him to tell me, just as He told Shasta "I am telling you your story, not hers."  And may God help me to be content with what I know of my story.  Lord knows my story is complicated enough as it is.  I do not want to lose my thirst for knowledge, but rather I want to refine it, so that the knowledge I seek is for my edification, for advancing the plot of my own story.  

May I also remember that "Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies" (1 Cornithians 8:1).  It is not in knowing the stories of others, but in loving them that the greatest changes will occur. Let the theme of my story always be love.