Waking the Dead

I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been ratified by mere facts. - G.K. Chesterton


I am reading: John Eldredge's, Waking the Dead. Nannerl gave it to me as a present.

Quoting from his book:
"And the best stories of all, the ones that bring us the Eternal Truths, they always take the form of parable, or sometimes we say, fairy tale. Better still to call them myths."

further on, he defines myth in this way:

"A story that brings you a glimpse of the eternal, or any story that awakens your heart to the deep truths of life." That is the unifying quality of all mythic stories, whether they be Sisyphus or Sleeping Beauty or The Matrix.

He goes on to quote Professor Rolland Hein:

Christian Professor Rolland Hein has described it this way: "Myths are, first of all, stories: stories which confront us with something transcendent and eternal...a means by which the eternal expresses itself in time."

**

So even when I am in my deepest, darkest moments of doubt, God reminds me that I've been given this gift of story for a purpose. That these words that flow from my hands are not merely words, but they're meant to be a reflection of his glory. I struggle and I doubt, and sometimes I think that maybe I should lay my pen down and give up the dream.

I look at myself with a critical eye and begin to wonder, does my story reflect God's glory? Does it transcend? Is it eternal?

Looking at what I have written, in the light of eternity, will it stand up to the test?

Here again, I find myself reshuffling my priorities, changing my stories, reviewing my plots and recognizing that in my life there is someone bigger in charge of my words...the words don't have their source in me, in the words of the Wordeaters, "it is a gift."