Since the retreat with the good folks at the Advent Center, I have been contemplating the meaning of story even more. In preparation for teaching a summer series on Ephesians for an Adult Sunday morning class, I picked up the new commentary by N.T Wright entitled Paul for Everyone. In his introduction Ephesians and his beginning comments about chapter one in Ephesians, Wright as this to say:
"Paul's great prayer at the opening of this letter is a celebration of the larger story within which every single Christian story - every story of individual conversion, faith, spiritual life, obedience and hope - is set. Only by understanding and celebrating the larger story can we hope to understand everything that's going on in our own smaller stories, and so observe God at work in and through our own lives."
N.T. Wright's thought were just a reminder to me that our lives are truly made up of smaller stories. These stories are sometimes written by us and sometimes they are scripts handed to us through other people's expectations. Also, we find "substitute stories" that give our lives a sense of meaning and even hope. The only way we can truly understand our stories is to live them in light of the larger story which has to do with God and God's work in our life and world.
And, as a way of explaining the "contents" of this story, N.T Wright states it this way: "Look back over the story which Paul has told as an act of worship. God has taken the initiative; God has done what was necessary at great cost to himself, to buy us back from the slavery of sin; God has given us the spirit as a sign and foretaste of the whole renewed cosmos which awaits us as our inheritance. Discovering that you are to receive an inheritance like that should change your whole life. How can you not join in the hymn of praise."
Our story...our larger story...is a story or praise which gives shape and meaning to our smaller stories.
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