We all are characters in the story God wrote from creation. Every day of our lives was written in a book before the first one began (Psa. 139:16), and when the Lord judges us, he will do so on the basis of what is written in our life story (Rev. 20:12). Yahweh is the Author, and we are the characters on the stage. This is one of the reasons human beings discover themselves and find strength and wisdom and are so powerfully moved by stories, whether written or acted before us.
Stories have been the means by which human societies have communicated values and virtue since the ancient world. You may immediately think of Homer’s Iliad and The Odyssey, but stories began long before either of those masterpieces. What are cave drawings but pictorial stories which memorialize great battles, hunts, and deeds? My office includes many volumes of theology and philosophy, including a large section on ethics. But truth, goodness, and beauty, including values, virtue, and wisdom, are more powerfully and memorably communicated in the books on the shelves which contain great literature, both history and fiction.
I reread great books and stories every year because they are the works that have proven to be the ones that teach and reinforce the lessons that I need. John MacArthur once expressed consternation at why anyone would ever choose to reread a book. I cannot understand why anyone would ever willingly read a book he knows he would never wish to reread. The difference is explained by why and how a person reads. You could be adequately nourished even if you never tasted the same food twice in your life, but a diet without repetition is a life without tradition and culture.
One of the many reasons we ought to reread great stories is because our lives include many of the same scenes and chapters over and over. You have noticed how great stories reappear in the Scriptures multiple times. Liberal scholars claim this is because these episodes are fictional and mythological, the repetition proves they are there for artistic effect and not as a matter of historical record, never seeming to realize that life is a collection of repetition and that the same events and experiences play out again and again in their own lives and on the pages of human history.
Every week, throughout each year, over many centuries, and now millennia, the Church has done the same things again and again. God calls, cleanses, consecrates, communes, and then commissions his people. The Church confesses her sins, celebrates the Father’s forgiveness, concurs with the revelation of the Word, communes in the Spirit, and continues victoriously to live and die by faith as salt, light, and leaven in the world. Our lives consist not in new things each day but in the same things, over and over. Birth and death. Marriage and funerals. Feasting and fasting. Celebration and sorrow. Triumph and trials. But unlike the pagans who saw life as a cycle, Christians recognize forward momentum in every recurrence. We are not spinning in place but moving along a trajectory toward glory. History is teleological; it has a purpose, a goal, and a glorious end.
One day I will close my favorite books for the last time. There will be a final trip to Mordor and then to the Grey Havens, a last battle against the White Witch, a last step through the door into Aslan’s country. We will not forever travel with Ransom through the heavens to visit distant worlds. Odysseus will return home and stay there, and Christian will pass through the river never to face danger and devils again. Each time I finish one of the great books, I wonder if that will be the last time I get to read it. Do not waste your reading. Life is too short to read much of what passes for literature today.
In a similar way, one day there will be a last Lord’s Day, but of course, it will be only the beginning of the true Lord’s Day, the eternal one, the day we were made for and toward which we have been traveling all along. Do not waste your Sundays. Do not underestimate the value of every occasion of worship in this present world. Yes, we are doing all of the same things again, but it is not meaningless repetition. We are revisiting the great story, the true story, the gospel of God’s Son and our salvation.
The Christ story is the one all other stories are telling us about. Every cave drawing and every Greek epic is a Christ story. Every story in the history of the world is true or false insofar as it reflects, anticipates, and echoes the Creator’s story of the redemption of this world. So enjoy the story once again, as long as you live. Fill your days by meditating on that story of redemption. Come and adore the Author of life and Perfecter of our faith.
