Month: April 2019

I’ll never forget the afternoon my daughter woke up from her nap as red as a lobster and burning up.  After a quick check with the pediatrician, we headed to the emergency room, where they diagnosed her with scarlet fever.  I had no idea people even got scarlet fever anymore. It’s forever tied in my mind with The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams. Maybe you’re familiar with the story about a stuffed bunny and a little boy who loves him so hard he becomes real.

Love is the only thing that can do that kind of magic.

We’re all a bit like the stuffed bunny in the story, who starts off with consciousness but no heart. It’s the experience of being loved and learning to love that awakens the magic that transforms cloth and stuffing into flesh and blood. Isn’t this what happens to us in Christ?  

I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart.  Ezekiel 36:26

This is a metaphor, but also it isn’t. What God says He will do, He does.  His goal has never been dusting us off, but making us into new, living persons.  The whole of the Christian life is the experience of the old cloth-and-stuffing self being transformed bit by bit into living, responsive, tender flesh and blood.  The invisible change of heart works its way outward into visible actions.

There are abundant examples of this right outside my front door right now.  In the fall I planted tulips. Dry, papery bulbs that were buried in darkness have undergone a miraculous transformation hidden from view. What I planted looked nothing like what’s bursting from the earth in a riotous multicolored display. The bulb is certainly a tulip, but the tulip in full bloom is glorious.

The Bible speaks again and again of God’s work of transforming us from one thing into something else, a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17, Galatians 6:15). This doesn’t mean getting rid of or writing over who we are.  It’s more like moving us from bulbs to flowers. Christ promises to change dead things into something else. He proved it was possible with His Resurrection on Easter morning. He accomplishes this magic through His powerful, unstoppable, real love.

“‘Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”  – The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams

The other day my daughter and I were talking about an essay she was writing and I reminded her it wasn’t a research paper so she could make anything she wished happen.  People could be where she wanted them to be and say the things she wanted them to say. She was the author.

 

The author is the one who gets to decide what happens in the story. Underneath the dialogue and the action, there’s a theme, a message that’s being conveyed.  Everything in the story is moving towards a goal, the final resolution of the conflict. Nothing is meaningless or wasted.

 

If this is true in fiction, how much more is it true in reality?  The Author has written a theme into each of our lives that’s moving us steadily and with purpose towards a final conclusion.  He wastes nothing – no time, no words, no experiences. Everything ties together in the end.

 

If I were the author and decider of my own story, I think it wouldn’t have been a very good story.  I’m pretty sure that when you got to the end, what I would have written into my life wouldn’t have been all that interesting or compelling. There wouldn’t have been any high drama, no plot twists, nothing to make you want to read it again. In the end, I would have written a boring story about how great I am.  How well I kept the rules, played fairly, was nice to people and animals. It would have been a story about what a good Christian I was.

 

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be a good person and be successful and be liked by others.  The problem is that even if the story recognized my flaws, failures, and shortcomings, it still would have been about my ability to rise above those things, about how I overcame an obstacle or a challenge. It would have been an ok story, but nothing more than a story, a fabrication, a fiction.  Because what I can do on my own is pretty good, but nothing to write home about.

 

Our stories will always be lackluster until we recognize we aren’t the main character. There’s an Author who is writing something entirely different and unimaginably better than we could come up with on our own and we get to be part of it.

 

The story God is writing in my life isn’t a story of how great I am by any means.  There are plenty of challenges and obstacles that have been overcome, but what makes it a really good story is that it’s really about how great God is.  What He has done and can do. My story is both much different, and much better, than the one I would have written.

 

It’s also a much truer story. And a more compelling one because what’s true for me can also be true for you. It doesn’t matter one bit if you’re completely different from me if what’s good in my life has nothing to do with me and everything to do with God. I can’t give you my talents or skills or abilities or blessings, but God has already given you everything you need to fulfill your role in this grand masterpiece He has written. Because it’s God doing the doing, whatever power and action and goodness I’ve experienced are also extended to you.

 

Because I’m part of a story about God, that dark valley, that narrow place, that overwhelming flood – they’re challenging, but not insurmountable.  Because it’s God’s power in me, I can do things that would otherwise be impossible. He can make what He wants to happen happen. He’s the Author.

 

I am sure that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished.  Philippians 1:6