Finding Our Place in God’s Great Story

“He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. " Ecclesiastes 3:11

One day J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S Lewis, and Hugo Dyson were on a walk together. C.S Lewis was not a Jesus follower and he was talking to Tolkien and Dyson about something he had discovered in his research. He noticed a remarkable similarity among fairy tales no matter where they originated in the world. He was questioning how it was possible given the different cultures and regions from which the stories had originated? 

Tolkien seized the moment and explained to Lewis the reason there is a similarity in all these stories is because behind all of these stories is one true story. He pointed out that all the fairy tales and stories are faint echoes of the one true story. 

Nine days later Lewis became a Jesus follower while riding in the sidecar of his brother's motorcycle on the way to the zoo. Years later he wrote about this motorcycle ride and recounted that he did not know how it happened but at the beginning of the ride he did not believe what Tolkien had told him but by the end of the ride he did. From that point on he became a dedicated Jesus follower for the rest of his life.  

This most interesting anecdote from Lewis's life is a perfect illustration of why we talk about helping people find their place in God's great story. The bible tells us God has built eternity into the heart of every human being. While this is true, humans are not able to naturally understand God's story without encountering the living Jesus. 

In an attempt to explain what they are feeling, and in search of meaning, people have developed story telling based on the seed of eternity God miraculously placed in every human heart. These stories are often tales of good versus evil with good winning in the end. For instance, what good is a story unless the prince is able to kiss the sleeping princess to revive her and to live happily with her forever after? In the story we see the "faint echo" of one who saves us from our worst troubles - even death.   

Through discipleship training people are equipped to know God's story and how their story intersects with God's story. When this transaction is understood it becomes more natural to, like Tolkien did, seize an opportunity to help others to start on a journey to find their place in God's great story.