It’s Not About Me…
What’s your story…
I don’t know about you, but I enjoy both reading and/or hearing a great story… I enjoy all kinds, but in particular, stories about the lives of others…
Within this realm I enjoy learning about people from all walks of life… their beginnings, the struggle sessions, the victory laps, the descent as they approach the finish line…
Most of all, I enjoy the ones of spiritual transformation, of a life healed and changed by the power of the Gospel, in the person of Jesus Christ… how when approaching the finish line… they see that it’s not the end, but rather the beginning of a new path…
When I was young, and up to the time I entered military service I had heard a Story… I always thought it was a great story… in fact there were many stories within that Book… I was told I should believe it… all of it… so I did… why not…
Only a year into my military service, I attended my first Bible Study in the Gospel of John… I figured this one was in the bag, after all I’d read these stories many times…
But one night, at Bible study I heard the “rest of the Story”, the part I’d read over many times without much thought… now I became part of the story… His story…
“As quickly as the weight was lifted, came the realization of the One I now represented…”
After that night, the Story, and the stories within took on new meaning… He began to write a new chapter of my story…
Many years have passed, some of the chapters, honestly I’d like to tear out and start over… but that isn’t how He writes His Book…
The truth is it’s ancient text, written long ago by His Hand… at the right time, He led me to the story He’d already written, to live it out…
As much as I like to think I was totally in control of my path, the good and the bad… it was already there…
You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would abide, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you.
— John 15:16
He knew what chapters, in my infinite wisdom I’d try to rewrite… and boy did I try… in spite of my foolishness, He had mercy and He forgave… He wrote the consequences and lovingly brought me back, to keep turning the pages… to finish my story…
As I near the end of this book of His, my story… or so I thought… I realize that all along, it wasn’t mine… or really even about me… it was HisStory… the one He created us to carry on… to tell it… in word and deed… to represent Him… in HisStory…
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
“I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.
— John 10:10-11
Well, the sun is starting to set… fitting, as I finish the last sip of a fine aged Pu’erh tea… I closed the Book… until tomorrow…
Time to walk and watch the sun set…
Until next time my friends,
Raj