Life as Story

This past Sunday, the Gate started a four week series on how to live your life like its a story. Many thanks to Donald Miller and various other writer types for putting this idea into print.

That being put out there, we started Sunday with Story, sort of an intro to the idea. As I think about this concept, I notice that Story and Vision become interchangeable. What we say when we want our lives to tell a good story is that we want to have a life of vision. The great stories either tell us about people with vision, or are, in their essence, visionary. Star Wars is visionary, Lost is visionary, Gone With the Wind is about people with vision, Lord of the Rings is really both about vision and itself visionary. My favorite line from Lonesome Dove is the last line of the miniseries. A reporter asks Captain Call a series of questions, which he of course ignores. Finally, exasperated, he begs, "They say you're a man of vision!" Call stops, a flashback ensues of the cattle drive, and of the friends lost on said drive, and he responds, "Man of vision, you say?" He slightly cocks his head and says, with the odd mixture of pain and pride, "Hell of a vision."

To live a life worthy of story, or a life of vision, it is impossible to go without loss, pain, disappointment right alongside the victories, the happiness and the fulfillment. Frodo loses a finger and his peace yet saves the world for his friends, Bruce Wayne in the Dark Knight loses the chance at a normal life for the sake of saving Gotham City and protecting a friends integrity, Call was the first cattle rancher in Montana but he lost his lifelong best friend.

Vision is costly, but it is necessary. Vision not only leads us to a better life story, it serves others. The Gate is a product of vision, and though starting a church for college students and young adults that meets in a bar is not simple, easy or financially profitable, it is worthy. Each life we touch is as vital to us as we hope that we are to them. People who have come to our gatherings find themselves welcomed into the Gate's story, into our lives, and I hope caught up into something larger than just a bar church.

See, thats what story is about: My story caught up in HIS Story. My role, my narrative, is but one plot thread of an epic. I fear that too often, we feel that our lives are not important, too mundane. The answer to that is that we need to realize that our story, our vision is as large as we can see. We can't all be caught up in a story like Frodo's, or even Captain Call's, but there is adventure, and it lies in pursuit of Christ.

If we choose to take the risk to see the vision.