A Million Miles in a Thousand Years (The Beginning of a Story)

I bought a book for $4.99 on Amazon Kindle on Friday night after reading one page from the book and declaring to L that "This book is going to change my life. And yours." The page read:

"If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn't cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers. You wouldn't tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on to think about the story you'd seen. The truth is, you wouldn't remember that movie a week later, except you'd feel robbed and want your money back. Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo. But we spend years actually living those stories, and expect our lives to feel meaningful. The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won't make a story meaningful, it won't make a life meaningful either."

I want to make something very clear from the beginning, just so it doesn't get lost in what I'm about to say: Significance comes from Christ. There's no life story that, apart from Christ's redemptive work, has eternal meaning. His death, burial, resurrection, and glorious return to bring His people home one day is the grand meta-narrative that I first and foremost desire to be a part of. May God grant me the ability to never lose hold of that precious perspective.

But I do want my life here on this earth to matter, and I believe that's not an unholy thought. I mean, why would God go through the whole point of sticking us here on this earth if our life here didn't have meaning? Couldn't he have come up with a better plan of maybe lining us up to all have our turn at a pop quiz for who God really was and whether or not we really loved him and granting us immediate access to Heaven if we "passed"? I mean - seriously - what's the point of 70+ years of wandering around here on earth if the sole purpose of our life is to decide whether or not we want to spend eternity in Heaven with Jesus? I don't mean that to sound heretical. I just think that maybe there might be a little more at stake with the time we have here on this earth than just figuring out whether or not we want to go to heaven one day.

Donald Miller describes this "life purpose" through the analogy of story in his book, "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years":

"A good storyteller speaks something into nothing. Where there is an absence of story, or perhaps a bad story, a good storyteller walks in and changes reality. He doesn't critique the existing story, or lament about his boredom, like a critic. He just tells something difference and invites other people into the new story he is telling." 

"A story is based on what people think is important, so when we live a story, we are telling people around us what we think is important...The ambitions we have will become the stories we live." 

"'Writing a story isn't about making your peaceful fantasies come true. The whole point of the story is the character arc. You didn't think joy could change a person, did you? Joy is what you feel when the conflict is over. But it's conflict that changes a person. You put your characters through hell. You put them through hell. That's the only way we change.'" 

“Humans naturally seek comfort and stability. Without an inciting incident that disrupts their comfort, they won’t enter into a story. They have to get fired from their job or be forced to sign up for a marathon. A ring has to be purchased. A home has to be sold. The character has to jump into the story, into the discomfort and the fear, otherwise the story will never happen.” 

 “If the point of life is the same as the point of a story, the point of life is character transformation. In nearly every story, the protagonist is transformed. He's a jerk at the beginning and nice at the end, or a coward at the beginning and brave at the end. If the character doesn't change, the story hasn't happened yet. And if story is derived from real life, if story is just condensed version of life then life itself may be designed to change us so that we evolve from one kind of person to another. ” 

“Once you live a good story, you get a taste for a kind of meaning in life, and you can't go back to being normal; you can't go back to meaningless scenes stitched together by the forgettable thread of wasted time.”

“One of the reasons we fail to acknowledge the brilliance of life is because we don't want the responsibility inherent in the acknowledgment. We don't want to be characters in a story because characters have to move and breathe and face conflict with courage. And if life isn't remarkable, then we don't have to do any of that; we can be unwilling victims instead of grateful participants. But I've never walked out of a movie thinking all movies are meaningless. I only thought the movie I walked out on was meaningless. I wonder, then, if when people say life is meaningless, what they really mean is their lives are meaningless. I wonder if they've chosen to believe their existence is unremarkable, and are projecting their dreary life on the rest of us.”

“The most often repeated commandment in the Bible is 'Do not fear.' It's in there over two hundred times. It means we are going to be afraid, and it means we shouldn't let fear boss us around. Before I realized we were supposed to fight fear, I thought of fear as a subtle suggestion in our subconscious designed to keep us safe, or more important, keep us from getting humiliated. And I guess it serves that purpose. But fear isn't only a guide to keep us safe; it's also a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life.… the great stories go to those who don’t give in to fear.” 

"There is a force in this world that doesn't want us to live good stories. It doesn't want us to face our issues, to face our fear and bring something beautiful into the world...I believe God wants us to create beautiful stories, and whatever it is that isn't God wants us to create meaningless stories, teaching the people around us that life just isn't worth living." 

“We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn't mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It's a good calling, then, to speak a better story. How brightly a better story shines. How easily the world looks to it in wonder. How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat them.”

“Here's the truth about telling stories with your life. It's going to sound like a great idea, and you're going to get excited about it, and then when it comes time to do the work, you're not going to want to do it. It's like that with writing books, and it's like that with life. People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen. But joy costs pain.”

And so I'm left to wonder...

What kind of stories have I been telling with my life? 
What kind of story do I want to tell with my life?
Am I willing to do the work of facing my issues and facing my fears in order to create a beautiful story that gives glory to God and develops meaning for the time He has given me on this earth?