Great Stories
While I am typing away on my laptop, my daughter is sitting nearby reading a book. I confess, it brings a smile to my face to see her doing something that has always brought me such joy. I have traveled to a great many places and had so many adventures as I lost myself in the pages of a good book. I journeyed across the prairies in a covered wagon with Laura Ingalls Wilder. I have solved many mysteries with brave Nancy Drew. And how I loved to climb through the wardrobe into Narnia!
I laughed and cried with Meg, Amy, Beth, and my favorite sister, Jo. I’ve explored Avonlea with Anne Shirley and trapsed across Middle Earth with hobbits, men, dwarves, and elves. Few things are as wonderful to me as climbing into a book and losing myself for a while. My friend, I love a good story! Child of God, though you may not realize it and it certainly may not always feel like it, God is using your life to write a good story. He is writing a good story for you.
This life you are living is meant to be a beautiful story that will ultimately glorify Him. May I get really personal and ask you some questions I would like you to consider? Are you submitting to His plans or are you fighting against them? Are you allowing Him to write your story the way He wants to or are you trying to write your own story? I know it isn’t always easy and some of the pages in your story have been really hard, but I assure you that He is working in the midst of them.
Even through the chapters of our lives that we don’t understand, He is working. Even when it doesn’t feel like it, He has a purpose and a plan. He has a purpose and a reason for everything He allows to be a part of our story. Will we always like it? No. Will we always understand it on this side of eternity? Also, no. Is He still trustworthy? Yes. Is He still good? Also, yes. How can I say this? I can say this because of what I know to be true of my God.
The same God that loves us so much that He would give His Son to buy our pardon, is the God writing our story. The love that led to the cross is a love that can be trusted. When I can’t understand, I remind myself of this truth. He loves me. He loves me and His love for me can be trusted. His love for me guides His every decision and it is this knowledge that gives me the courage to surrender the pen to Him and allow Him to do the writing. It allows me to trust His plan.
I hope this will encourage you to do the same, dear heart. Spend some time reading the Greatest Story ever written and you will see that He writes the best stories. You can trust Him to write a great one for you, beloved!
The LORD appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. Jeremiah 31:3
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11
- Katrina Douglas
