What Story Are You Living?
Have you ever stopped to ask:
"What story am I living?"
Who are the characters? The heroes? The villains? The setting? The plot?
Did I even choose this story?
Or have I been cast in a role in someone else’s script?
In his book He Saw that it Was Good, Sho Baraka says this:
"Many of us are blind to the storytelling we-do as we travel through our personal narrative arc. The decisions we make communicate our beliefs about the world. But do we see the story? Rarely. But we are still living out a story-a plot with setting, characters, conflict, and (maybe) resolution. We are participating in the creation of our narrative, either passively or actively."
The truth is that it is alarmingly easy for us to be unaware of the narrative arc that we find ourselves in someone else's story.
In the movie, Free Guy, Ryan Reynolds plays a NPC (non-playable character) who lives an unfulfilling, repetitive life as a bank teller until a chance encounter allows him to put on a set of glasses that reveals what's really going on: a world of active characters, chances, opportunities, threats, violence, hope, love, and maybe most important of all: agency.
Are you an NPC?
What if the story you find yourself in is bigger, with more purpose, and worth, and hope, and freedom than you ever thought possible?
I'd love to invite you to try on a set of glasses and see for yourself if the story they reveal does in fact make more sense of life. What if there was a better story about who you are, why we are here, why life seems so hard, and what to do about it? Would you want to hear it?
The lenses I'm speaking about are the Christian Story.
Wait.
I know that’s enough to make some people want to leave right away. I get that, and don’t blame you.
But it’s possible the version of the "Christian Story" you're familiar with might not be the real one. If your gut response is to check out, it’s likely the version you’ve received has been blurred by hurt, bigotry, political noise, or anti-intellectualism.
What if you could encounter Jesus, and the story centered around him, with fresh eyes? The Jesus Story. You might just find what you’ve been looking for: a story that honors your worth, speaks to your pain, offers hope, and invites you to a new purpose.
The lenses are explained on the rest of this website using these symbols: OIIO. Take a look. Try on the glasses. See for yourself. It might just be a better story.