The Big Story (#244 of 365+)

Yesterday I read an Associated Press article about Matt Green, a civil engineer from New York who is walking across the United States from Rockaway Beach, NY, to Rockaway Beach, OR. This
sentence caught my attention: “…for Green, there's just something about the act of walking that makes him really happy, much more content than he ever would have been in his office cubicle in Manhattan, where he used to daydream about doing something epic like this.”

Click here to read the article

Click here to follow Matt’s journey

So he always wanted to do something “epic,” huh? I’ve heard that word a lot since I married my husband! He’s a gamer and he likes to play World of Warcraft. For those who don’t know WoW, it’s a global online role-playing game where one can explore the extensive landscape of that “other” world through their avatars (either Horde or Alliance) and interact with other real players to defeat monsters and complete quests. Although I’m not a gamer myself, I’ve listened to countless conversations between my husband and his guild mates over the chat channels. The camaraderie is real and reaching an achievement is very rewarding—especially if they can unify to accomplish something “uber” impressive like a “world first.” When that happens, there will be “grats” all around (congratulations).

Once, while talking about the human longing for epic stories, legends, and myths J.R.R. Tolkien told his friend C.S. Lewis, “The story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened… The Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call ‘real things’” (Letters of C. S. Lewis, pp. 288-289).

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9)

Today’s verse reminds me that the human heart’s longing for beauty and meaning was planted there by our Creator. For believers, the desire is multiplied a thousand-fold by the infilling of the Holy Spirit. No matter how far we might roam we’ll always have this beacon that’s calling us homeward where we’ll find everything we could ever want or need.

Lord, when I look to you I see both the beauty and the meaning that my heart yearns for. Thank you for giving me the eternal flame and letting me be a part of your story. I love you. Amen.