“The first to speak in court sounds right— until the cross-examination begins.” Proverbs 18:17
A man I used to go to church with told me a story. He was driving down the highway when suddenly a car came racing past him, weaving in and out of traffic. Looking at this car racing past, he immediately thought, “what a jerk”. As the man continued down the highway, he saw a terrible car crash. He pulled over to see if he could somehow help. He was surprised to see that the man who had raced past him was there on scene giving CPR and triage care to multiple victims. Apparently, he was an ER Doctor who had been called on scene to give emergency care to this multi-car pileup. The man was struck that the story he had told himself was completely wrong. He went on to make a point that God was teaching him to be more aware of the stories he tells himself.
The stories we tell ourselves shape our experience of reality. We may not even realize that we create stories about what we experience in life- about people, about ourselves, about God.
One author writes, “Were we created to meet the needs of a lonely deity? Or to participate in the loving overflow of the Trinity? Is God waiting for us to earn His affections? Or has He loved us boundlessly from the beginning? The story I tell myself about just those questions – the nature of God and the way He feels about His creation – will profoundly affect the way I narrate reality. In hard times, it is my underlying story that will determine whether difficult experiences are proof God doesn’t care about me, or occasions to experience His nearness and ability to redeem even my pain. If we learn to co-operate with the Holy Spirit, He’ll use sources – Scripture, creeds, scholarship, conversations with friends, attentiveness to our own experience, slow realizations, and sudden epiphanies – to help us get our stories straight.”[1]
Ask God to help you to consider the stories in your mind - stories about Him, about others, about yourself - and may He straighten our stories.
[1] Arends, Carolyn. “Getting Our Stories Straight”. Faith Today, April 2019.