Erased

Father Greg Boyle is in the business of erasing the past. A Jesuit priest who is the founder and director of “Homeboy Industries” in East Los Angeles, Father Boyle has put together a team of physicians trained in the laser technology of tattoo removal. The team is part of a program that takes the tattoos of ex-gang members and wipes the slate clean. For many, it is as crucial a service as it is merciful.

Gang-related tattoos prevent many former gang members from getting jobs or advancing in work. For others, the markings critically impinge on mental health or put them in serious danger on the streets. There is no fee or community service required to receive the tattoo removal offered by Homeboy Industries. It is strictly a gift—a gift that is perhaps a modern look at Christ washing the feet of his friends. Currently, there is a waiting list of over a thousand names.

For those involved, the spiritual imagery is often compelling. The seeming
permanence of a gang tattoo fosters the attitude that the gang’s claim is also permanent. It is a mark of ownership as much as identity. The emotional consequence is that it seems a part of you that can never be shaken. I suspect some of us have felt like this with past mistakes, actions whose mark we cannot shake off, decisions embedded into our existence like permanent tattoos on bodies longing to forget.

It’s not hard to see how profound the erasing of such marks could be in the life of a former gang member. The life marked by Christ is similarly altered. Like former gang members who have had the marks of a former life removed, so our sins are blotted out by Christ. They are remembered no longer.

To those holding on to the scarred markings of former sin God would say: “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more” (Isaiah 43:25). Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Like the unmarked ex-gang members among us, we are made into something new.

One of the curious things about the growing list of people interested in laser tattoo removal is that Father Boyle is straightforward about the procedure. The process of tattoo removal is extremely painful. Patients describe the laser procedure as feeling like hot grease on their skin. And yet the list grows, each name representing a life that longs to be free and is willing to endure the pain to seize it.

Followers of the Christian faith have described God’s work in our lives as the “refiner’s fire.” Removing the impurities we have embedded into our lives is at times quite uncomfortable. But like a child that trusts her mother enough to endure the pain of having a splinter removed or the young man who undergoes the burning process of removing a gang tattoo, we are freed by skillful hands. The Great Physician is sometimes a surgeon. But when we look at God through the refining fires of God’s presence, we
know that it was well worth putting our name on the list (whether it was our doing or God’s in the first place). “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” At his table, we are made new.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

Ordinary Hero

The question was asked and the room fell silent: “Does anyone ever feel they’ve lived up to their potential?” It was a loaded question, not only because it was asked in a group of persons struggling with vocation, but also because the word “potential” is elusive in its definition. What does “potential” mean in a world that views achievement as athletic prowess, celebrity status, or economic success? If the exceptional is the guide for the achievement of one’s potential, how will those of us who live somewhere between the average and the ordinary ever feel we’ve arrived?

The inherent routine and mundane tasks that fill our days contribute to the struggle to understand our “potential.” How can one possibly feel substantial when one’s day-in, day-out existence is filled with the tedium of housework, paying bills, pulling weeds, and running endless errands? These tasks are not celebrated, or noticed. They are the daily details that make up our routine.
Indeed for artists and bus drivers, homemakers and neurosurgeons, astronauts and cashiers our days are filled with repetitive motion, even if we do have moments of great challenge or extraordinary success. It is no wonder then, with our societal standards and our routine-filled lives that we wonder about our potential. Indeed, does much of what we do even matter when it feels so ordinary? Does the “ordinary” contribute to our sense of meeting our potential, or does its predominance in our lives simply serve as a perpetual reminder of a failure to thrive?

The “simple lifestyle” movement attempts to locate potential in exactly the opposite ways of our society. In this movement, simplicity unlocks the key to potential, and not acquisition, or achievement, or recognition. Clearing out what clutters and complicates makes room for finding potential in what is most basic and routine. In the Christian tradition, as well, there are many who believe that one’s potential and one’s
purpose would only be found in the radical call of simplicity. Some of the earliest Christians, who fled the luxury and security of Rome once Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Empire, believed that one’s “holiness” potential could only be achieved within the radical austerity of a monastic cell. There in the cloistered walls where each and every day presented simple routine, repetitive tasks, and the regular rhythm of prayer and worship, perseverance with the ordinary became the path to one’s potential.

Brother Lawrence is one of the most well known of this type of monastic. In The Practice of Prayer, Margaret Guenther writes that “Brother Lawrence, our patron of housekeeping, was a hero of the ordinary.”(1) As one who found his potential in cultivating a profound awareness of God in the ordinary tasks of his day, Brother Lawrence was an ordinary hero. While he attended chapel with the other monks, his true sanctuary was amongst the pots and pans
of the monastery kitchen. What we may not realize in the popularized retelling of his story is that he actually began by hating his ordinary work. His abbot wrote about him:

“The same thing was true of his work in the kitchen, for which he had a naturally strong aversion; having accustomed himself to doing everything there for the love of God, and asking His grace to do his work, he found he had become quite proficient in the fifteen years he had worked in the kitchen.”(2)

Quite proficient in the kitchen. Could it be that Brother Lawrence was able to fulfill his potential by washing dishes? Despite his strong aversion, he found purpose in the very midst of the most mundane and ordinary tasks of life. He fulfilled his potential by focusing on faithfulness. This is not faithfulness that triumphs over the desire to fulfill one’s potential. Indeed, as Guenther describes it “faithfulness rarely feels heroic; it feels much more like showing up and hanging in. It is a
matter of going to our cell, whatever form that might take, and letting it teach us what it will.”(3) Availing himself to consistent faithfulness yielded the blessing of both proficiency and presence—the presence of God—right there in midst of the monotony of dirty pots and pans.

Fulfilling one’s potential has little to do with greatness. And yet, the heroism of the ordinary does not preempt “greatness” that our world confers to those who have reached their potential with staggering and dramatic achievement; for even those who achieve greatness have faced the drama of routine and the tidal wave of tedium. But to assign the fulfillment of one’s potential solely to great acts and recognition is to miss the blessing that comes from faithful acts of devotion, often done routinely and heroically in the ordinary of our everyday. Perhaps it might be said of us, as it was of Brother Lawrence: “He was more united with God in his ordinary activities.”(4)

Margaret
Manning is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Seattle, Washington.

(1) Margaret Guenther, The Practice of Prayer (Boston: Cowley Press, 1998), 113.
(2) Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, The Practice of the Presence of God, ed. John J. Delaney (New York: Image, 1977), 41. (3) Margaret Guenther, The Practice of Prayer (Boston: Cowley Press, 1998), 112.
(4) Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, The Practice of the Presence of God, ed. John J. Delaney (New York: Image, 1977), 47.

If Only

Hindsight is 20/20. We know the truth of the expression from experience. “If only I would have taken a different street, I wouldn’t be stuck in traffic.” “If only I would have quit while I was ahead, I wouldn’t be stuck in this situation.” Such thoughts are unending: If I would have paid closer attention, if I would have pushed a little harder, if I would have stopped pushing… if only I knew then what I know now, things would have turned out differently.

Quite probably in many cases that is true. If we knew beforehand what we know after the fact, things could have very well turned out differently. Yet equally wrapped up somewhere within this “if only” mindset is the thought that things would not only have turned out differently but that they would also have turned out better. Knowing this would take much more than 20/20 vision. Standing on the other side of knowing gives us a different perspective, to be sure. But to assume that because of that perspective we now see perfectly is likely a perilous oversight.

The Israelites often cried out to God in the belief that they were seeing perfectly. The shackles that bound them to Egypt and misery were broken off before their eyes. God moved them from slavery to freedom via the floor of the Red Sea, putting before his people a sign momentous enough to make an impression upon each day ahead of them. Yet walking through the adversities of the desert, they cried out as if never having seen the hand that was leading them. “If only we had died in Egypt! Or in this desert! Why is the LORD bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt?” (Numbers 14:2-3).

It seems the view from hindsight can be as misleading as it is insightful. The Israelite’s mistreatment at the hands of the Egyptians was overlooked in their perception of the other side of the Red Sea.
Moreover, their deliverance at the hands of God in hindsight was seen as unremarkable and unrelated to their need for God in the present.

The cry of “if only” is all too often a cry of distrust. The seemingly harmless expression insists that we know best, that we know what is better, that we know what we need. Like the Israelites in their forgetful wailing we are often certain that we not only know what will make our situations better, but what will finally make us happy. We always seem to know just the thing our lives are missing. “If only we had meat to eat” the Israelites insisted, “we would be satisfied.” But they were not, and we are no more successful. In reality, what we need is often a far cry from what we think we need. For good reason many Christians can look back to a prayer and thank God that it wasn’t answered.

G.K. Chesterton speaks in a poem of the posture we often forget when the cry to change the past or achieve the perfect future emerges from our lips. He writes,

Thank God the stars are set beyond my power,

If I must travail in a night of wrath,

Thank God my tears will never vex a moth,

Nor any curse of mine cut down a flower.

Instead, the Christian is given the freedom of thankfulness that the one listening to her prayers sits with wisdom far greater than her own. For even Job who cried, “If only I had never come into being, or had been carried straight from the womb to the grave” found in the end that he had spoken out of turn. But we can thank God that God’s thoughts are beyond our own, that God knows the longings we express and the ones we do not know to express. We can thank God for the promise that all things work together for good—our trials, our mistakes, our past, our future.

God is at work even in the moments when we would cry “if only.” And his own “if only’s” are far more sobering. As Christ approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said,
“If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace” (Luke 19:41). Rest assured, God knows your need and so reveals Himself that you might also.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

God of Remembrance

It is fascinating to see the increasing role of forensic science in solving crimes. DNA can be recovered in anything from a few skin cells to a licked postage stamp. Forensic scientists can establish an association between a suspect and the crime scene with only an eyelash or single strand of hair. It appears we leave traces of our presence where ever we go.

Interestingly enough, your hair not only tells people that you have been there, it also tells your story—or at least provides some noteworthy details to that story. Scientists have discovered that your hair can divulge significant habits and particulars of your lifestyle: what you eat, where you live, if you smoke or drink, if you are of Asian or European decent. And a single hair can keep records for months, if not years, depending on its length.

When my mother first told me as a little girl that God knew the number of hairs on my head I was thoroughly amazed and a little
troubled at the thought of it. The number of hairs on my head was something I didn’t know about myself; it was something no one else seemed to know about me either. This meant that someone knew something about me that my mom or my grandma didn’t know. It meant that someone had the capacity—and the aspiration—to know me and all of my details.

Even as I looked at this promise quite literally, it was at once both comforting and troubling. When I brushed my hair and caused several strands to fall out was I making work for God? How often did God have to recount them? And why did God care how many hairs I had anyway? Certainly it was one detail that God could overlook.

Then sometime later I was given the rest of Jesus’s words uttered that day: “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows” (Luke 12:6-7). Strand of hair or simple sparrow, worry, fear, or dream, God does not overlook even one.

That God knows the number of hairs on our heads is still a thought at which we do well to wonder. Wrapped up tightly within such knowledge is the great and fearful truth about who we are praying to when our eyes grow heavy with sleep, who walks beside us through shadowy valleys and streams of still waters, who hears our groaning when we don’t know what we mean. God knows us more specifically and more effectively than we know ourselves—a thought that reminds us that God is Father, a detail that holds both immeasurable love and great consequence. God knows not only the stories told in each strand of your hair but every detail of who you are: the desires of your heart, the worries you carry, the questions you don’t know how to ask. In this perfect love our fears are cast aside and we are given not only reason to trust, but a will to obey.

According to the Natural History Museum of London,
the average person has up to 150,000 hairs on his or her head. The one who knows exactly where you stand in that average, who knit you together in your mother’s womb and knows each word on your tongue before it is formed, is a God of remembrance. Like the psalmist at this thought we wonder. “O Lord, what are human beings that you regard them, or mortals that you think of them? They are like a breath; their days are like a passing shadow” (144:3-4). In the echoing of that question across time the promise of Christ is also heard: “Everyone who acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God” (Luke 12:8). Not even one of them will be forgotten.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

Leopards and Little Sins

A familiar fable tells of the hunter who lost his life to the leopard he himself had saved as a pet for his children when the leopard was just a cub. The moral of the story can be deduced easily from the title, Little Leopards Become Big Leopards; or else, sin is easier to deal with before it becomes a habitual practice that eventually defines our lives.(1) Though the story as it stands is a beautiful illustration of a profound truth, there is a deeper lesson regarding the nature of sin that is easily concealed by this line of thinking and which, I believe, lies at the very essence of the Christian call to Christ-likeness. The problem is that the parallel between little harmless leopard cubs and little harmless sins can be dangerously deceptive.

Whereas leopard cubs are indeed harmless, there is no stage of development at which sin can be said to be harmless, for individual acts of sin are merely the symptoms of the true condition of our
hearts. It is not accidental that the call to Christian growth in the Scriptures repeatedly zeros-in on such seemingly benign “human shortcomings” as bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, slander, and malicious behavior (Ephesians 4:31). In his watershed address, The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus placed a great deal of emphasis on lust, anger, and contempt—behaviors and attitudes that would probably not rank high on our lists of problems in need of urgent resolution. Armed with firm and sometimes unconscious categories of serious versus tolerable sins, we gloss over lists of vices in the Scriptures because they seem to be of little consequence to life as we experience it.

But when we fail to grasp the subtleties of sin, we run the risk of rendering much of biblical wisdom irrelevant to our daily life and practice. While we appreciate the uniqueness and necessity of the sacrificial death of Jesus on our behalf, his specific teachings can at times appear to be farfetched and the
emphasis misplaced. Does it not seem incredible that the God who made this world would visit it in its brokenness, dwell among us for over thirty years, and then leave behind the command that we must be nice to each other? Can the problems of the world really be solved by having people “turn the other cheek” and “get rid of anger and malice”? To quote a close friend, “Hello!”

Unfortunately, those “little” sins are not only the mere symptoms of a much bigger problem; they are also effective means of alienating us from God and other human beings. How many careers have been ruined only because of jealousy? How many people have been deprived of genuine help as a result of the seemingly side-comment of someone who secretly despised them? How many relationships have been destroyed by bitterness? How many churches have split up because of selfish ambitions couched in pietistic terms? How much evil has resulted from misinformation, a little coloring around the edges of truth? And
have you noticed how much we can control other people just through our body language? From the political arena to the basic family unit, the worst enemy of human harmony is not spectacular wickedness but those seemingly harmless petty sins routinely assumed to be part of what it means to be human.

According to a NASA scientist, a two-degree miscalculation when launching a spacecraft to the moon would send the spacecraft 11,121 miles away from the moon: all one has to do is take time and distance into account.(2) How perceptive then was George MacDonald when he uttered these chilling words, “A man may sink by such slow degrees that, long after he is a devil, he may go on being a good churchman or a good dissenter, and thinking himself a good Christian”!(3) Similarly, C.S. Lewis warned that cards are a welcome substitute for murder if the former will set the believer on a path away from God. “Indeed,” he wrote, “the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope,
soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”(4)

Now the decisive path out of this quandary is not just a greater resolve to be obedient to God. Such a response is usually motivated by guilt, and the duration of our effort will be directly proportional to the amount of guilt we feel: we will be right back where we started from when the guilt is no longer as strong. The appropriate response must begin with a greater appreciation of the holiness of God and a clear vision of life in God. It is only along the path of Christ-likeness that the true nature of sin is revealed and its appeal blunted. Yes, brazen sinfulness is appallingly evil and destructive, but it only makes a louder growl in a forest populated by stealthier, deadly hunters masquerading as little leopards. It is no idle, perfunctory pastime to pray with King David:

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Test me and know my thoughts.
Point out anything in me that offends
you,
And lead me along the path of everlasting life (Psalm 139:23-24).

J.M. Njoroge is a member of the speaking team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) For example, Paul White’s, Little Leopards Become Big Leopards, published by African Christian Press.
(2) John Trent, Heartshift: The Two Degree Difference That Will Change Your Heart, Your Home, and Your Health (Nashville: Broadman and Holman Publishers, 2004), 17.
(3) George MacDonald, in George MacDonald: An Anthology by C. S. Lewis (New York: Dolphin Books, 1962), 118.
(4) C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, in A C.S. Lewis Treasury: Three Classics in One Volume (New York: Harcourt & Company, 1988), 250.

The Spirit of Steps

With the occasion of U.S. Memorial Day in my mind, I was thinking about my grandfather. For years he marched in our small hometown parade, proudly representing the United States Air Force. I have not made it home for the parade in the past few years, but in my mind are countless parades past. I recall the serious look on his face as he carried himself and the uniform on his back with stately regard. When I was among the cheering crowd I loved to watch his official countenance momentarily dissolve as the veterans marched past our house. For those of us waving from the front porch my grandfather always reserved a warm smile and a distinguished nod.

But one thing that would remain meticulously unaffected—whether grinning at grandchildren or honoring the flag with his attention—was his careful propensity to march in step. Carrying the weighted memories of all that our nation attempts to pause and remember on Memorial Day, a veteran could perhaps do nothing less.

But when the roles were reversed, and my sister and I were marching in the junior high band while my grandfather was looking on, we were the slouching targets of his disgust. “Did you realize that no one in your marching band was actually marching? Not one of you was in step.” While the etiquette of carrying oneself with proper time and rhythm may have been lost on teenagers, to my grandfather, marching in step was as necessary as remembering to wear shoes.

To this day, I cannot watch a parade without duly noticing if its participants are in step with the drummer. And I realize now that to march in step one must first want to march in step. It requires a willingness to hear the cadence and align oneself with it accordingly. Subsequently, our unwillingness to march in step said something about our band, our commitment and unity, our respect for what we were doing, and our willingness to follow the authority of the drummer. And it was true; while we
prided ourselves on performing in concert, we did not see ourselves as a marching band, and it showed in our walk. Moreover, the attitudes with which we carried ourselves ultimately affected our sound.

Christianity uses a similar imagery where it speaks of keeping “in step” with the Spirit as it relates to fruit and authority. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control… Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:24-25). The apostle Paul wants followers of Christ to recognize that the fruit we produce as his followers is directly related to the cadence we pursue. If our desire is to march to our own beat and direct our own way, we are likely to be out of step with Christ and out of touch with the Spirit.

There are so many ways to walk through life. There
are so many drummers to choose as guiding authorities of life’s parade. The question of cadence is related to every aspect of life; from the way we carry ourselves to the tune we produce as we go along. In the earnest prayer of Psalm 119, the psalmist recognizes both his heartfelt need for a “drummer” and a desire to walk in his better way. “Direct my footsteps according to your word; let no sin rule over me.” Like marchers who align themselves with one calling out the better cadence, the Christian pilgrim aligns herself with the enduring voice of God and the victorious life of Christ. She is being led further into the house of heaven by the very one who is preparing her room.

Since it is in Christ’s steps the Christian follows, by the Spirit that he lives, and by God’s voice that he is directed, his steps are aligned by the Spirit accordingly, walking forward in faith, treading where the saints have trod. No doubt, like my grandfather, the heavens rejoice at the sight of
the great cloud of witnesses, who, in following hard after Christ by the Spirit who enables them, find themselves marching in step.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

Fishing License

As the summer arrives each year, I revisit many fond memories of fishing outings with my older brother and grandfather. Living near Lake Erie, my grandfather would thrill us with stories of his great fishing adventures with Northern Pike and Muskie. They were great fighters and would continue that fight long after they had been pulled from the water and thrown into the boat.

My own fishing career, if you could call it a fishing career, was far less dramatic than my grandfather’s adventures. My career began at Lake Pymatuning. Whenever we came to visit in the summers, my grandfather would take my older brother and me to fish is this kinder, gentler lake. Unfortunately, I was never successful enough as an angler to know the thrill of catching many fish. What I was successful at was hooking someone in the boat! Both my brother and I bear the scars of fishing hooks in our arms and legs.

Even though my angling career was not very successful, I
liked to think that I was following in a great tradition—not only one begun with my grandfather, but one that began with a young carpenter’s call to four fishermen to follow him. I read with amazement how these four fishermen “immediately left their nets and followed him” (Mark 1:18). What was it about this call to follow and the invitation to become “fishers of men” that would compel such a dramatic response?

The notion of “fishing for people” was actually not a foreign idea for those familiar with the Hebrew prophets. The prophets used this term to describe God (Ezekiel 29:4ff, 38:4). God was the great “angler” catching people for judgment—judgment that preceded the coming of God’s kingdom. This came to be the understanding of these texts, particularly after Israel returned from their exile in Babylon. Having experienced the horror of the exile, the Jews had a new appreciation for obedience to the law. Furthermore, they thought their restoration was dependent on
cleansing their world from all sin and evil. So prior to the coming kingdom, God would go on the ultimate fishing mission to gather evil and destroy wickedness.

With this background, it is easy to understand why the first disciples jumped when Jesus used this phrase to call them. The judgment was coming and they were being called as fishermen for God. Jesus had come to purify the nation from evil, and they would be co-anglers with him, catching evil and wiping Israel clean of sin prior to the kingdom of God being established in their midst.

Their fishing mission began with Jesus’s announcement, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The followers of Jesus heard this call as a warning to get life in order or be caught up in the fierce wrath of God. But Jesus upended their expectations. Something new happened. First, Jesus made this announcement to the Gentiles. These were the very ones God should have destroyed! Yet, rather than destroying, Jesus began to
heal. Soon after calling the disciples, Mark’s gospel reports that Jesus healed a demoniac; in Matthew’s gospel, he healed “every disease and every infirmity among the people” and in Luke’s gospel, he healed a leper.(1) The old understanding of this mission kept all these people as unclean outsiders; these were the ones who needed to be gathered up in the nets of judgment and destroyed.

But Jesus rightly understood what the in-breaking of God’s kingdom entailed. Calling individuals to the mission of fishing was a sign of Jesus’s proclamation: “The time is now fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.” Jesus went fishing as the sign of the in-breaking kingdom in his very person, and in his teaching ministry. And so it remains today. Rather than ridding the world of sinners and of evil, Jesus gathers these outsiders into the net of his fellowship where they are healed and transformed. Dallas Willard says it this way: “Jesus then came into Galilee announcing the good news
from God. All the preliminaries have been taken care of and the rule of God is now accessible. Review your plans for living and base your life on this remarkable new opportunity.”(2)

It is into this same fishing mission that Jesus calls those who would follow him. His intention is not simply telling people what they need to turn away from, but showing them who they can turn toward. To be sure, turning to God requires an entire reorientation of our lives: we do need to repent, to turn around, and go in a kingdom-direction. In the presence of Jesus, there is now the option of living within the light of God’s kingdom purposes and finding our lives caught up into the kind of life we were always intended to live.

Often attempts at fishing for God’s kingdom might be just as bumbling and clumsy as my childhood attempts at casting. Sometimes they are only as good as our own understanding of what it means to be kingdom dwellers. As those who would seek to follow Jesus, we
too are called to review our plans for living and base our life on this remarkable new opportunity. Jesus’s mission compels us beyond ourselves and towards others, reaching out to those on the margins, healing those who are sick, blessing those who are cursed, and combating evil with love and justice. We are invited to join Jesus in his ministry of reconciliation, gathering people up into the net of the kingdom and kingdom living.

Margaret Manning is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Seattle, Washington.

(1) Matthew 4:18-23, Mark 1:21-28, Luke 5:1-15.
(2) Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy (San Francisco, Harper Books: 1998), 15.

Story Lines

It has been said that life is like entering a very long movie that has already started and then learning that you have to leave it before it ends. It is at once an analogy I appreciate and find troubling. As a Christian, it is the reality, and the hope, I profess: “My days are like the evening shadow; I wither away like grass. But you, O LORD, sit enthroned forever; your renown endures through all generations.”(1) Even so, entering a movie already started and leaving before it ends also means that I could entirely miss the point.

Every time I read St. Augustine’s Confessions I seem to come uncomfortably face to face with myself, and with it, the thought that someone has already told my story—or at least very real parts of it. It is this shock of recognition that wakes me to my own pride and makes real the danger of missing the point. In Augustine, as in countless others who have wrestled with God long before me, I am reminded that I am a small character
in a much greater story. I have entered a movie that has already started, and to my surprise, it’s not all about me.

What if there is a vast stage full of lives who have wrestled with questions quite similar to your own? Men and women who have gone before you may well have lived with the same doubts and faith, pains and hope. Many have lived aware, often more than we are, of life as it existed before them and time that would march beyond them. Many have lived to “tell the old, old story,” that they might take it in to their own. For they saw with the writer of Ecclesiastes that it is important to realize there is “nothing new under the sun,” lest we miss the sun entirely by focusing only on the shadows we watch it cast. They saw that it is important we see the momentaryness of our lives specifically because there is a permanence to life itself, a story with an end and a beginning.

Jesus once turned to his disciples and said, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you
see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it” (Luke 10:22-23). The disciples were seeing in the present all that kings and prophets looked for at a distance. Yet even those who walked intimately with Christ were not always aware of all there was to see. Chances are good we are missing him too.

If life is like entering a movie that has already started and leaving before it ends, it is important to look both behind us and ahead of us in order to see what is in front of us. There is only one place in Scripture where God is referred to as the “Ancient of Days” but it significantly comes from the lips of one indelibly marked by the present. “As I looked,” says Daniel describing a dream, “thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat. His clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool. His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were
all ablaze” (7:9). This one addressing God as sovereign over days long before his own is someone who could have been overwhelmed with the small picture of life before him. Jerusalem was in ruins; God’s people were scattered. Daniel could have easily viewed his situation as being stuck somewhere in the middle of a movie he wasn’t happy with, yet he chose to see beyond the troubling scene in which he was living. And he saw the “Ancient of Days” in the midst of the days he was given.

We, too, have entered a story that has already started and we may very well leave before it ends. But we can still live with sight beyond our own—looking back at lives of faith and God in history, gazing forward at all that God has promised, seeing all that God has placed before us. Though the picture before us seems unfair, or life is not what we bargained for, there is a story. Our lives may be like the evening shadow, but they are lived within a greater tale.

Jill Carattini is
managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Psalm 102:11-12.