Every once in a while someone tells me, “I don’t read fiction.”

I understand. Not everyone enjoys the same kind of reading. But I confess that the words still make me a little sad.

Not because everyone ought to read novels.

But because story is about much more than filling a few hours or escaping from the real world. At its best, story helps us understand the real world—and sometimes ourselves.

A good story can take us places we have never been and introduce us to people we would never otherwise meet. But it can do something more.

Story lets us live more than one life.

We experience grief we have not suffered, courage we have not yet needed, choices we have never faced.

Story gives us a safe place to encounter truth.

We can watch someone fail, forgive, betray, endure, love, believe, doubt—and quietly ask,

What would I have done?

What do I believe?

What really matters?

That is the power of story.

Jesus certainly understood it.

He could make profound theological statements—and did. But when He wanted ordinary people to understand some of life’s deepest truths, He often told them a story.

A farmer scattered seed.

A traveler was attacked on a dangerous road.

A shepherd discovered that one sheep was missing.

A son took his inheritance, left home, wasted everything, and finally came to his senses.

We remember those stories two thousand years later.

Why?

Perhaps because Jesus wasn’t simply giving people information. He was inviting them into the story. Somewhere in the farmer, the traveler, the shepherd, the wounded man, the older brother, or the wandering son, we recognize something about God—and something about ourselves.

That’s one reason stories matter so much to me.

I’ve lived long enough now to have accumulated quite a few chapters of my own. Some have been joyful. Some painful. There are chapters I would happily live again and others I would never choose to repeat.

I have also lived long enough to know that some chapters I once would have gladly torn from the book became chapters without which I would not understand the story.

That has taught me something else.

We should be careful about judging a story, especially our own, while we are still in the middle of it.

A difficult chapter is not necessarily a bad story.

A failure doesn’t have to become the ending.

A loss may leave an empty place that never completely disappears. Yet even that empty place becomes part of who we are and how we understand the lives we have been given.

And sometimes what looked like an ending turns out, years later, to have been a beginning.

Perhaps you are living in one of those chapters now.

Maybe something you counted on has disappeared. Maybe someone you love is gone. Maybe the future doesn’t look anything like the one you planned. Or perhaps nothing is terribly wrong, but you find yourself wondering what the remaining pages are supposed to be about.

Don’t mistake the chapter for the whole story.

There may be more happening than you can see from where you are sitting.

I can look backward now and see connections I could never have seen while I was living through them—roads I would not have chosen and chapters whose meaning became clearer, but only much later.

I am still learning not to insist on knowing how every chapter is going to end.

Maybe that is part of faith.

So hold stories high.

Read them. Tell them. Listen when someone trusts you enough to tell you theirs.

And don’t be too quick to give up on your own.

There are pages you haven’t read yet.

Your story isn’t finished.

And the Author is still writing.

—W.

 

 

 

Thriller—>Family Suspense—>Christian—>Exciting—> Contemporary—>Historical suspense

~ THE CAIN FAMILY CHRONICLES ~

Three stories. Three tests. One question.

What will you believe when everything is at stake? 

Presence without answers.
Companionship without control.
Love without disclosure. 

Integrity without recognition.
Courage without certainty.
Faithfulness without guarantee.

(COMING IN SEPTEMBER)

Discovery without completeness.
Truth without certainty.
Faith without proof.

+++

AND COMING SOON:

Book Four in

~ THE CAIN FAMILY CHRONICLES ~

GRACE RISING

+++

Reading you can safely gift and recommend to others.

+++

THIS FROM a recent Zoom BookClub discussion about The Permission:

Thank you!!!! My friends loved having you there tonight (on Zoom) and were genuinely excited to hear your stories and ask questions about the books. You’re the best! 

—Robin’s BookClub

Ward schedules a limited number of Zoom BookClubs each year. If your club members are interested in meeting with the author of The Cain Family Chronicles, contact ward@wardtanneberg.com

+++