Press the arrow to listen to Casting Crowns sing “Slow Fade” while reading today’s devotion on the story of your life.
Scripture
All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised. For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us. Hebrews 11:39-40
Observation
Thirty-five miles. That is the distance that one thin grey line can be drawn out of a number 2 graphite pencil. That meaningless bit of trivia has been lodged in my brain from a table game we played last Thanksgiving. It made me look at my next yellow pencil with new respect, but shudder at my own finite existence.
I ask myself, “How long of a mark can you make on the pages of history?” For a brief span of years, the point of my personality is pressed on the thin skin of a spinning planet. I leave a mark behind. Too often I write the staff that graffiti is made of, but occasionally I rise to the quality of poetry. A tombstone will mark the full stop where my pencil will bounce off of the page of the earth.
The line of writing left behind, which I call my life, is so incomplete. It is but one line scribbled alongside billions of others, each with a surprise beginning and an abrupt ending. Together we are writing a thing called “history”.
Why can’t my life-line finish God’s story? Why is my life incomplete? There is a marvelous promise at the end of Hebrews 11. The chapter records many life-lines. Each life is an incomplete sentence just like mine. Like words of a book, each human life races across the pages to fill in more of the blank space, but none writing the words “The End.” The promise is that the completion will not happen until all the writers of human life are gathered together in heaven and together we will watch Jesus write the words, “The End.” “For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us.”
Application
Today my life-line is racing across the page, heading for an incomplete sentence. The only words that I will write with indelible ink will be those that reached outside of myself and into God with faith. My experience matters, because my faith-story is part of His-story. The greatest is yet to come. The Author of my faith isn’t finished yet and won’t write the final stroke without every human author being there to watch him write the last stroke. Then the party will begin.
Prayer
Father, I so look forward to heaven. I’m writing as furiously as a final-exam-essay-writer toward that goal today. There are many things that puzzle me as I look at what I’ve written. But you have given me hope that this will all work out in the end. I don’t need to know the ending before I die. I’m happy to be buried in question marks. The answer will be at the book signing, when you the author of my life write the last words on the pages of history. Then life will begin. Amen.
