Telling Stories

"Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are where we come from and THE PEOPLE WE HAVE MET along the way because it is precisely through these stories... that GOD makes Himself known to each one of us most powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also spiritually."

- Frederick Buechner, Telling Stories

It's with a heart full of conviction that I have come to trust these words when Jesus called on His disciples to "Embrace this God-life. Really embrace it, and nothing will be too much for you." (Mk 11:22)

Paul had learnt to be content with much as well as with little, to live free through much joy as well as through much sorrow - for nothing will be too much for you.

I think I am beginning to learn that too: to discover how God was really near even when I had dismissed Him to be far; that He was present in my world even when I thought Him to be absent; that He was faith-full even whilst I was faith-less; that He understood love in all its fullness whilst I was still toying with the trinkets of my infatuations and likes.

I was overwhelmed by joy as God's love came persistently knocking on my door in the likeness of Nick's unreserved outpourings into my life. I recoiled initially at the thought of receiving a gift so dear (he had bought me a PDA for my birthday). I was uncomfortable that anyone would lay down so much for me. The pressure, I thought, in receiving, and what of the expectations in reciprocating? My mind rattled on.

Until God spoke as clear as the midday sun - and as loudly and audibly as I have ever heard Him speak: Where your heart is there your treasures are also. Not that I quantified his love with cold hard mammon, mind you.

I was rather, struck by the reflection of his heart. And mine too.

The awful thought that perhaps my reaction was the same way in which we often find ourselves responding to God's generous, unreserved outpourings of love. We refuse to receive because we refuse to believe that there is any good in this world that God created, that anyone would do anything for us with no strings attached - save for the strings of love that expect nothing in return. We refuse to receive because we are unwilling to pour out with the same extravagance and generosity.

The truth of the matter is, we will never learn to love until we learn to for-give, to first give. And perhaps that is why we find it most mind-bloggling and are consequently moved to repentance (metanoia) when we do finally get our heads around the idea that this God who is Love for-gave us by first giving His beloved Son to us, even whilst we exalted our own kingdoms and thrones - indifferent, ungrateful, and ignorant.

I wonder what must have been going through the mind of the Prodigal Son at the homecoming feast that his Father had thrown for him.

I sat in the movie theatre later that night snuggled up cosily beside Nick. It wasn't until the credits rolled that I discovered that I had already been thoroughly and mercilessly stabbed by Joy so deep that I could only stagger and gasp for air. There was neither melodrama nor some wild proclamation of love, but in that moment I think I began to understand why so many would desire love so greatly.

The deep desire that stirs in each and every one of us to know and be known; to be completely human and at home with an-other, where the trappings of a fiercely materialistic and individualistic society may fall to the wayside, and where we may find a place safe enough to allow our hard shells to crumble into a heap of dust and ashes.

My fears and doubts suffered in the onslaught of Joy's mortal blow: Perfect love casts out all fear - the Lord your God is big, is strong, and is above all else faithful - and nothing will be too much for you.

Tears welled up in my eyes and flowed as freely as Christ's blood from the wounds of His stripes and nail-pierced hands.

I received God's most precious gift of love that night - the gift of a life that is free from fear. The joy-full realisation that I too have now the means to first-give and for-give, just as Christ first gave His life for me. The stab wounds of Joy were as evident as the scars that Thomas witnessed on Jesus' hands.

This life journey has been tough to say the least, fraught with perils, tragedy, and sometimes with burdens so heavy and valleys so dark that I too have cried out "God, God why have You forsaken me?" Yet I have looked to Christ's firm hold on the God-life and witnessed how nothing will be too much for you.

The crucified Christ caused the veil to be torn in two, and the tragedy and sufferings have paradoxically driven me closer to God and given me a firmer hold on a life of faith, hope and love.

The greater the sin and evil, the greater the grace of God that abounds. He who has been forgiven much also knows to forgive much, just as he who has been loved much finds himself full enough to love much. I have felt them all, and felt the extent of God's faithfulness in not just the same measure but more abundantly than that with which I have used to embrace the God-life.

In Buechner's words, "God acts in history and in your and my brief histories not as the puppeteer who sets the scenes and works the strings but rather as the greater director who no matter what role fate casts us in conveys to us somehow from the wings, if we have our eyes, ears, hearts open and sometimes even if we don't, how we can play those roles in a way to enrich and ennoble and hallow the whole vast drama of things including our own small but crucial parts in it." (Telling Stories, p.32)

"The God of biblical faith is the God who meets us at those moments in which for better or for worse we are being most human, most ourselves, and if we lose touch with those moments, if we don't stop from time to time to notice what is happening to us and around us and inside us, we run the tragic risk of losing touch with God too." (Buechner, Telling Stories, p.35-6)

I may be a master at rhetoric - but any homiletical pronouncements about God, I realise, is empty and limp if I am too blind to see and too deaf to hear what God is seeking to do and say through my very own flesh-and-blood experiences.

And so this has been one such attempt to consider not just the lilies of the field, but also the dead sparrow by the roadside. It has also been my attempt to seek Jesus, and to find Him so surprisingly near, in the person of Nick, who has taken his cue from God and enriched the stage upon which my life is being played out, on the stage upon which I have discovered time and again too, that all things work together for good - and nothing will be too much for you.