John Eldredge - Epic: The Story God Is Telling

I wonder what sort of tale weve fallen into?

J. R. R. TOLKIEN, The Lord of the Rings

Its been quite a journey for Frodo and Sam when the little gardener wonders this. Ever since they left home theyve encountered more wonders and more dangers than they could have possibly imagined. The battle on Weathertop. The flight to the ford. The beauty of Rivendell. The dark mines of Moria, where they lost their beloved Gandalf. Their fellowship has fallen apart; their friends are now far away on another part of the journey. Into the shadow of Mordor theyve come, two little hobbits and their cooking gear on a journey to save the world.

Its at this point Sam says, I wonder what sort of tale weve fallen into? Sam could not have asked a better question.

He assumes that there is a story; there is something larger going on. He also assumes that they have somehow tumbled into it, been swept up into it.

What sort of tale have I fallen into? is a question that would help us all a great deal if we wondered it for ourselves.

It just might be the most important question we ever ask.

Life, youll notice, is a story.

Life doesnt come to us like a math problem. It comes to us the way that a story does, scene by scene. You wake up. What will happen next? You dont get to knowyou have to enter in, take the journey as it comes. The sun might be shining. There might be a tornado outside. Your friends might call and invite you to go sailing. You might lose your job.

Life unfolds like a drama. Doesnt it? Each day has a beginning and an end. There are all sorts of characters, all sorts of settings. A year goes by like a chapter from a novel. Sometimes it seems like a tragedy. Sometimes like a comedy. Most of it feels like a soap opera. Whatever happens, its a story through and through.

All of life is a story, Madeleine LEngle reminds us.

This is helpful to know. When it comes to figuring out this life youre living, youd do well to know the rest of the story.

You come home one night to find that your car has been totaled. Now, all you know is that you loaned it for a couple of hours to a friend or your teenage daughter, and now here it is, all smashed up. Isnt the first thing out of your mouth, What happened?

In other words, Tell me the story.

Somebody has some explaining to do, and that can be done only in hearing the tale they have to tell. Careful nowyou might jump to the wrong conclusion. Doesnt it make a difference to know that she wasnt speeding, that in fact the other car ran a red light? It changes the way you feel about the whole thing. Thank God, shes all right.

Truth be told, you need to know the rest of the story if you want to understand just about anything in life. Jokes are like that. Theres nothing to them at all if you walk in on the punch line. Then she said, Thats not my dog! Everyone else is in stitches. What is so dang funny? I think I missed something.

Love affairs, layoffs, the collapse of empires, your childs day at schoolnone of it makes sense without a story.

Bring two people together, and they will soon be telling stories. A child on her grandmothers lap. Two men in a fishing boat. Strangers stuck another hour in an airport. Simply run into a friend. What do you want to know? How was your weekend? Fine is not a good answer. Its just not satisfying. You heard something about a mariachi band, a fifth of tequila, and a cat. And you want to know more about that story.

Look at our fixation with the news. Every morning and every evening, in every part of the globe, billions of people read a paper or tune in to the news. Why? Because we humans have this craving for meaningfor the rest of the story. We need to know whats going on.

Our boys are ambushed somewhere in Asia. Whats happening over there? A virus is rampaging on the Internet. What do we need to do to protect ourselves? Somehow we dont feel as lost if we know whats going on around us. We want to feel oriented to our world. When we turn on the news, we are tuning in to a world of stories. Not just factsstories.

Story is the language of the heart.

After all, whats the worlds favorite way to spend a Friday night? With a storya book, a favorite show, a movie. Isnt it true? Good grief! Theres a video store on every corner now. Theyve taken the place of neighborhood churches.

It goes far deeper than entertainment, by the way. Stories nourish us. They provide a kind of food that the soul craves. Stories are equipment for living, says Hollywood screenwriting teacher Robert McKee. He believes that we go to the movies because we hope to find in someone elses story something that will help us understand our own. We go to live in a fictional reality that illuminates our daily reality.

Stories shed light on our lives.

We might know that life is a journey, but through Frodos eyes, we see what that journey will require. We might know that courage is a virtue, but having watched Maximus in Gladiator or Jo March in Little Women, we find ourselves longing to be courageous. We learn all of our most important lessons through story, and story deepens all of our most important lessons.

As Daniel Taylor has written, Our stories tell us who we are, why we are here, and what we are to do. They give us our best answers to all of lifes big questions, and to most of the small ones as well.

This is why, if you want to get to know someone, you need to know their story. Their life is a story. It, too, has a past and a future. It, too, unfolds in a series of scenes over the course of time. Why is Grandfather so silent? Why does he drink too much? Well, let me tell you. There was a terrible battle in World War II, in the South Pacific, on an island called Okinawa. Tens of thousands of American men died or were wounded there; some of them were your grandfathers best friends. He was there, too, and saw things he has never been able to forget.

But in order to make you understand, explained novelist Virginia Woolf, to give you my life, I must tell you a story.

I expect all of us, at one time or another, in an attempt to understand our lives or discover what we ought to do, have gone to someone else with our stories. This is not merely the province of psychotherapists and priests, but of any good friend. Tell me what happened. Tell me your story, and Ill try to help you make some sense of it.