a friend of a friend
brought over a book for me from toronto
as i've had more time for everything
since i haven't been working...
nor have the mindset to explore and travel
i've been back to reading
it's funny the things i begin doing when sick.
it's now i realize
this is what i would do if i had time
it's actually limited to some things
because i can't do much when ill
so this book begins
'life, you'll notice, is a story'
okay...
you already think i will agree
and i do...
read on...
'life unfolds like a drama, doesn't it?
each day has a beginning and an end.
there are all sorts of characters
all sorts of settings.
sometimes it seems like a tragedy.
sometimes like a comedy.
most of it feels like a soap opera.'
'so if life is a story
what is the plot?
what is your role to play?
what is this story all about?'
'for most of us,
life feels like a movie
we've arrived at forty five minutes late.
something important seems to be going on...
maybe...
i mean good things do happen,
sometimes beautiful things.
you meet someone
fall in love.
you find that work that is yours alone to fulfill.
but tragic things happen too.
you fall out of love
or perhaps the other person.
work begins to feel like punishment.
things begin to seem like an endless routine.'
'we find outselves in the middle
of a story that is sometimes wonderful,
sometimes awful, often a confusing
mixture of both and we haven't a clue
how to make sense of it all.
it's like we're holding in our hands
some pages torn out of a book.
these pages are the days of our lives.
fragments of a story.
they seem important,
or at least we long to know they are,
but what does it all mean?'
and then it quotes somebody called chesterton
'with every step of our lives
we enter into the middle of some story
which we are certain to misunderstand.'
'we can discover the full story.
maybe not with perfect clarity,
maybe not in the detail that you would like,
but in greater clarity than most of us have,
and that would be the price of admission.
i mean, to have some clarity would be gold
right now wouldn't it?'
excerpts from 'epic'
john eldredge
