Yearning for Deeper Conversation…
Two of the most memorable biographical works I have ever read were written by people you will never meet. They are both in heaven, now; Jacob and Helen Smith, the parents of my wife. They were extraordinary people convinced their lives weren’t very important. Helen grew up in Michigan. Jacob in Alabama. In their later years, they decided to spend time most mornings writing down their life stories. They described life growing up in two totally different families, two totally different parts of the country. Neither Jacob nor Helen had what might be called wordsmithing skills. And as they recorded their stories, they didn’t write down everything. They did write down some of what they remembered, what stuck out to them. They’ve been gone for several years now, but reading their stories is still a unique blessing.
I read somewhere that even the longest autobiographies are only about 60 hours long if you listen to them on audio books. That means that whoever wrote those stories about themselves had to have left out almost everything they did in their lives. If a biography is going to be impactful, or particularly riveting, it’s because of the ‘high points’ or the things that are memorable … except, well except that most of us look at the mundane, ordinary lives we lead and don’t think the story of our lives would be that interesting. But, if someone were to make a movie of your life or mine, they’d have to leave out almost everything about us anyway, or it would take WAY longer that 60 hours to tell our life-stories.
If you are a believer, you are well acquainted with the story of Jesus. His life and ministry is recorded in the Bible, of course. The Message translation of Jn 21:25, says something interesting I think: “There are so many other things Jesus did. If they were all written down, each of them, one by one, I can’t imagine a world big enough to hold such a library of books.” Even the Gospels admit having to leave a lot of things about Jesus out of the records.
There are things about Jacob and Helen I wish they had written down. Questions I would ask them now if I could. At the time they were writing their stories, I’m sure some of those things seemed too ordinary to mention. And that’s the challenge of telling our own stories. We tend to leave out the things that don’t seem important to us. Breakfast tables. First jobs. Houses we lived in. People who changed us. Perhaps, prayers God answered. Even prayers He didn’t seem to answer. As storytellers, we may think we’re writing things that might be interesting. But we’re really deciding. We’re deciding what we think somebody else will someday want to know and remember.
So here’s a deeper question: Fifty years from now, what will someone who loves you wish you had told them about? Perhaps even something that happened …today?
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