The Story You’re Standing In


Hi Friends,

Sometimes we do this thing when we read the stories of people in the Bible. We wake up early to read Scripture, and we see the epic work of God in and through the lives of men and women.

Then we put down the book and head to the kitchen to clean up the sea of Crispix a sleepy kid spilled across the floor. Back to normal life.

But I want to alert you to something real happening in your life. As real as the cereal you crushed under foot and now have to find the hand broom to sweep up.

It’s this:

Your ordinary life is part of a massive salvation storyline of God.

If you felt yourself check out right there, I get it.

Maybe you’re like me — tired of grandiose “vision casting” from marketers and preachers alike. Side-eyeing the projections of grandeur that often precede asking for money or padding a follower count.

But in all the noise of church and culture that screams for attention, there’s a steadfast, beautiful, often quiet truth that threads through it all:

God is an attentive author, and He has designs on every single soul.

The story as we know it began in a garden where God made things, and it was good. It threads through sin and darkness, Noah and Moses, through the thundering visitation of Mount Sinai.

This story has themes of faithfulness and covenant, for it’s a salvation storyline.

And it threads right through this moment… you sitting here, reading what’s come through your inbox. It threads through toothbrushing and school pick-up lines, through parking tickets and weekend getaways.

God’s salvation storyline weaves through all of time and leaves nothing separate from its narrative. Nothing too banal or obscure. No sorrow dips too low to be caught up in its threads.

Eugene Peterson encourages Christians to “examine the everyday, apparently random data of (your) unremarkable life and discover the presence of grace and the storyline of redemption”.

The only thing we need is a heart turned to Him. Eyes renewed and able to see as the thread of God winds its way through each moment.

It’s epic really, this ordinary now — crumbs, broom, grace and all.

– Anna

P.S. There’s something we can do to help one another as we seek to stay attentive to our lives as part of the storyline of God. More on that next week.

Anna Blanc

I am a singer, songwriter, wife, mother, Jesus follower. I send out a 2-minute read every Tuesday about Jesus and life in God.

Read more from Anna Blanc

Hi Friends, Last night I stepped out onto the back deck. To be honest, I was escaping the thunderous noise (oh the noise!) of three boys who felt bedtime looming and were attempting to squeeze just a few more minutes of play out the day. I stepped out into what has been one of the first warm evenings of the year, heard the birds singing in the forest beyond our yard, and I had what felt like an involuntary reaction. It felt like when the doctor hits your knee just right and you get surprised...

Hi Friends, I’ll never forget it. I showed up for class in college, slid into my seat, and noticed the girl on my left had a large smudge on her forehead. She was an acquaintance, and in my earnestness to be a “real friend”, I pointed it out. “You have something on your forehead”, I said, gesturing to her as if wiping at my face. “It’s Ash Wednesday,” she said, turning in her seat. Whoops! Neither my husband nor I grew up in churches that followed the church calendar or included liturgy. So...

Hi Friends, Last week we talked about finding every last bit of our ordinary lives in the grand storyline of God. This week, let’s look at how we help one another do just that. When Eugene Peterson counseled pastors on how to help their parishioners find themselves in God’s story, he said, “Listening is the first step. It is the precondition for… making the transition from what a person perceives as alienation and experiences as a jumble of unrelated irrelevancies to a sense of coherence and...