A Story of Stories

I finished reading The Hunger Games on Monday night (yea, this post is late oops.). They were like 1984 for teens. I was really enthralled by them and frankly they kept showing up in my mind throughout any given day and I woke up a few times re-playing images in my mind of them. PTSD, is what they describe too well, a 17 year old girl’s attempt at dealing with killing and being the face of a revolution.

But what I liked the most is no one had told me anything about them. I was on the road for the first time, I’d never seen the view before and never even heard of its beauty.

Like the first time I heard U2’s Where the Streets Have No Name (but not as amazing), like the first time through Romans, Inception, Jonathan Edwards, or The Count of Monte Cristo (since the movie… sucked).

Stories are like that, no? They entrap our minds and force us to imagine (something we don’t do enough of as adults) all sorts of possibilities.

I really do think it’s an overly used cliché, “Your life is a story,” and sad too, cause the impact of the statement is completely lost on us. It’s true though. Just ‘cause it’s not full of Hollywood ‘beauties’ doesn’t make it any less of a tale.

We seem to trudge (like the guy from Knight’s Tale) along like life is not exciting enough. When people are dying all around us (literally and spiritually); when a war is raging within us; when love is root deep inside us. The commons of WSU is loaded with people, all of them with unique narratives.

As believers in Jesus we should understand this more than most, as those who’ve been brought from death to life, from being beggars to princes.

So, here’s the deal: stop looking to something else for fulfillment and look to the God of all to satisfy your cravings for an ‘interesting’ life. He can create the minds who created the stories, songs, and movies so he can create something better out of you… Plus to judge your life by a book is like comparing a mountain to the flint hills.

Literary Things

I finished reading the Harry Potter series over the weekend, and then I promptly began reading Dracula (you know just reading books pop-Christianity has damned at some point but are now classics) at the recommendation of a good friend. But back on the track of Harry Potter I wish to relay something, something that I feel, rather know to be truer than the weird legalism that tells people certain books send you to hell if you read them.

"Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, &, above all, those who live without love."

Love. We over use the word to be sure. In Harry Potter it is the only thing, which kills Voldemort (Ahhh! I said his name!). In The Count of Mounte Cristo love is the only thing that keeps Edmond Dantes from carrying out his revenge (Yea, the movie screwed that up bad). In A Tale of Two Cities love is what presses Sydney Carton to be executed in the place of Darnay saying, “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.” In the Christian narrative the thing that brings about the end of Satan, sin, and death is the love of God. “For God so loved the world…”

This ethereal thing, this love, is powerful, in literature it proves to be the downfall of the antagonist; in Christianity it presses God to save man; and in life we are pushed to give up dreams and fight for those we love. To sacrifice and compromise to see the good of another carried out.

But more than these nifty little things it must be highlighted that love is the reason God saves anyone. Yet we expect it to be love for us, when reality speaks to the love of himself being the cause for redemption. Egomaniacal? Yes, thank God. ‘Cause if God is to be God he must worship what is most worthy of worship and if God is most worthy of worship then he must worship God or prove to be in contrast to his own law of idolatry.

Pity those who live without love. Pity because there is no power, no hope, and no joy. Pity because there is nothing more exquisite than love. Pity because the love of God has proven, will prove, and is proving itself to be the end of the fall.