Recently I started to feel an itch somewhere deep inside me in a way I never have before. It was a sort of longing that has grown stronger by the minute. It’s an urge, a craving for something I’ve never thought much about—adventure. Donald Miller writes beautifully on the subject, and I’ve fallen in love with his books. From him, I’ve learned how we ought to try to live better stories, so that our lives will be full of stories worth telling when we’re older.
I’ve reviewed my life and surveyed the contents for the best stories. I’ve got a few good ones. But when I get to heaven, and I’m walking with Jesus face-to-face, what stories will I tell him? And I don’t mean how people tell stories to someone for the first time, as if informing them about events that took place. I mean telling stories the way you do when you’re catching up with all your old friends. Last summer, my best friend got married in New Mexico. All of our closest friends came together and the guys all spent a couple nights in a cabin together. The night before the wedding, we all sat around the fire in what was easily one of the greatest experiences of my life. We reminisced about the lives we’d lived together so far. We remembered back to times when we were living in the same house in college, or when we went to someone’s lake house for a long weekend and stayed out on the water all day long. We were up until the early hours of the following morning, laughing so hard that we cried—and we were telling stories. They weren’t stories that any of us hadn’t heard a hundred times before. But they were stories that we loved telling together over and over again. Those are the kind of stories I’m talking about telling Jesus.
And it’s not as though we even could tell God a story He doesn’t already know. He sees everything we do—everything that happens to us. But if we don’t invite Him into our stories, then that’s what we’d be doing when we’re sitting there with Him—trying to tell Him stories we lived like He didn’t see the whole thing. What I think is most important about the stories we tell Jesus is whether or not He was in them. I want my stories to be about the times He and I shared together. I’ll have eternity to spend with Him, so I’ll want a lot of good memories to talk about.
I think God wants us to tell Him stories like that night around the fire. He wants to reminisce with us about all the best and worst times in our lives. He wants to laugh with us about the times that we embarrassed ourselves in front of a crowd of people, or almost died because we thought jumping off a bridge into a river would be worth the thrill. I think He wants to hear us tell the stories of the times we hurt the worst so that He can watch our faces as we realize—finally—why He let it all happen.
I’m planning a pretty big trip for the summer, after the snow on the mountains thaws. It’s a trip during which I’ll be on the road by myself for a really, really long time. Normally I’m not crazy about driving alone for too long. But in this case, I can’t wait to get on the road. I’m going to have countless hours in some of the most beautiful places in the country, and the only One I’ll be able to share it with is the One who created it all. And honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m hoping that when it’s over, I’ll have made a lot memories and lived a lot of stories that I’ll get to talk about with Jesus when I get home.
But what about today? What about the times when we’re not on the open road, chasing adventure, pursuing stories far from home? I think we actually have opportunities for stories a lot more often than we realize. I think every day is a new opportunity to live a great story. But if I’m being honest, I rarely live that way. In fact, most of my days are spent living towards a time when I think I’ll really be doing something that’s “story-worthy.” But each day God gives us is a clean slate—a chance to start a new story. So when I wake up tomorrow, will I live that way? Will you?
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