My Story…His Plan

“You must be very careful not to forget the things you have seen God do for you. Keep reminding yourselves, and tell your children and grandchildren as well.”
Deuteronomy 4:9 (Contemporary English Version)

In our recent Missions Weekend, I was struck by one of the lines in the song we sang, which said, “Somehow my story is a part of Your plan”. Hold that thought…

My family and I were recently blessed by being able to take a trip to revisit the place where the kids were born when we lived in the UK. Along the way, we made stops in Amsterdam, Paris, York, London, and our former home, Lincoln.

All are very historic cities, and all have places of ‘monuments to faith’ – cathedrals, etc… all built in a day gone by, when Christian influence was so significant in Europe. But today, they’re only relics and curiosities for most people.

However, one of the great moments was at York Minster. Amongst the throngs of tourists, the voice on the loudspeaker interrupted everyone at 3pm to invite them to honour the place as being a house of prayer, and to silently wait or join in as the person said afternoon prayers – reminding everyone that it is still a place of worship!

In some ways, it brought a touch of reality into what we were looking at. But what about other ‘real life’ stories?
We had two purposes to our trip: 1) to help our kids understand the setting in which God shaped us for the current ministry we are part of, and the character He produced in us; and 2) We have been trying to teach our kids to discover that when history is experienced beyond the textbook, it is a far more important witness. Fow example,  seeing the awe-inspiring grandeur of York Minster, but knowing how Constantine was declared Roman Emperor there in 312AD, and the impact his conversion to Christianity would have for Western history. Or seeing one of the four remaining copies of the Magna Carta (the very first human rights document from 1215) in Lincoln Castle, and then walking through the fields in Runnymede, where King John was forced to sign it. Or at Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam, walking up through the hidden passage behind the bookcase into their secret hideaway from the NAZI S.S.!

Like many Christian parents, we have heeded the Deuteronomy verse above, and have read them stories of wondrous events in scripture, but we hope they’ll always be more than just ‘tales’, and that in reading about people like the martyrs and faithful of York (who in the course of a generation saw all of the conquerors from Scandinavia embrace the same Cross that their vanquished countrymen held too), they will be able to tell of their own tales of God’s intervention and miracles in their lives.

So, too, have we tried to tell of the great works of God in our lives personally… the times of both struggle and renewal in our journey… stories of steps of faith and God’s provision… and taking them to places where we journeyed, and lived, to help bring those stories alive.

We visited our old neighbours while in Lincoln, and the kids disappeared for a few minutes, then came back saying ‘we just got a tour of our old house’.  So Dar & I raced over… and the kind lady who bought the house remembered us. She invited us to also tour the house… and most of it was still decorated the same way - just a few changes. But she said one thing that was very interesting… I noticed from the symbol on her doorpost and then the Menora in the living room that she was Jewish. One of the first things she said, though, was how happy they are in the house, and that we left our ‘Christianity’ in the house, and that there was a sense of peace that they have enjoyed since they moved in nearly nine years ago.

The other day in England, I was really struggling to fight off both jet lag and a cold. I mentioned that I was not feeling very well. My 11 year-old daughter’s first reaction was to walk over to me, put her arm around me, and start praying for my healing… “Dear Jesus…” Well, I can’t tell you what hearing those unprompted words in prayer means to me as a father!

So I guess the lesson for me, and maybe for all of us, is to be encouraged that as we do faith together, we are writing our stories on each other’s lives. So let’s remember to be intentional as we cultivate a culture that embraces telling our own story within the Grand Story of God’s plan.

As we write our own stories we are writing history… we are writing His Story!

And “Somehow my story is part of His plan”.