Merge into a Better Story

We are often urged to “write a better story” with our lives. Of course this directive by itself can be a mask for the grossest egoism. Under the guise of “writing a better story” we could just seek self-advancement in every arena. A better image is to merge our story with the story of God. But even here we must exercise spiritual discretion. In what sense do we merge with God? Or to put it plainer, who is doing the merging?

Without dispute, Jesus has provided the way to God. In the deepest sense of the term, Jesus merged humanity with divinity in his own body. The incarnation of God is the best illustration of how to merge our stories with the story of God.

Unfortunately our nature is strongly prone to twist things to our view, our side, our advantage. Even as I view my story merging with God's my language can betray me. Am I “inviting Jesus into my life” almost as if he were a homeless waif longingly looking into my living room, too shy to ring the doorbell? Or am I submitting to his call on my life? Even the language of our “decision for Christ” might betray whether I see myself merging into his life or whether I am inviting him to merge into mine.

We've all been there. We're driving down the highway and a sign ahead tells us that our lane is ending and we need to merge. The traffic is moving fast. We need to either speed up or slow down to fit into the flow. We do not have the right of way. We will need to adjust.

We've also been in the lane with the right of way. We've seen the people with their turn signals. We have the power! We can be kind and let them in or we can squeeze them out.

So which lane is Jesus in? Is he moving along with his turn signal on hoping we will be kind enough to include him? Or does he have the right of way, and he's blinking his lights, waving his hands, smiling and nodding at us to come over to his way?

There's only one lane headed to eternity. If we insist on keeping our lane, we will perish. If we merge into Christ, sunken into union with him, we will experience his resurrection life in a lane that never ends.

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Header image: Rutledge, Matthew. Merging into Downtown. July 19, 2009. Retrieved from flickr.com. Some rights reserved.