On the plane over, I started reading Donald Miller’s latest, “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.” It’s written in classic “Miller-style” as a series of seemingly unrelated essays, thoughts, & musings, that are all somehow, someway connected to each other in such a way as to cause a deep & probing introspection & evaluation of self, life, & priorities.
What’s it about, you ask? It’s about Story.
Using the context of a movie being made based upon his life, Miller explores the elements of a good story… which ultimately is really about the elements of living a good story, one worth reading. A story of life means deep & meaningful relationships, hope & loss, joy & pain, risk & stretching for the difficult, unique, & hard to obtain.
Makes me examine the story I’m writing with my own life; where I’ve settled for the comfortable instead of pushing through difficulties, hardship, pain, & inadequacy.
Reminds me that most of my life’s most rewarding & blessed moments are directly tied in to relationships – people who know me & are known in return; who’ve seen me up close & personal, in my strengths, weaknesses & frailties… & who love me anyway.
I ponder life looking through the wrong end of the binoculars… a glimpse, a backwards view, from the end towards the beginning, through the years, wanting, hoping, praying that the Most Important things in life would actually have been the main elements of my story. That I didn’t get lost on a rabbit trail, a selfish pursuit that had no lasting value or contribution to the Story.
Faces swim in front of my eyes. People, each valuable & precious, representing the interconnected & intertwined lives that touch my Story. Now it’s my eyes that are swimming.
I’d recommend the book. And even more, to re-evaluate the Story we’re living with the only life we have.
Headed to Mainz in about 2 hours to spend time with Jan & the enChristo Foursquare church. We’re having a BBQ & then talking about what it means to be Foursquare…
The Foursquare churches here in Germany have been going by the name FreiEvangelischeGemeindeWerk (FEGW, which, loosely translated means Free Evangelical Fellowship) – just last week, they have officially decided to change their name to Foursquare Deutschland… & part of what I’m here to do over the next week in a few churches is help bring a deeper connection to the Foursquare US church, but also to the heart & values of Foursquare.