The Stories we tell
A number of years ago, I saw youth ministry video that talked a great deal about ‘Clean White Pages’ – how each day, every young person we serve is filling in a blank page that will take it’s place in the story of their life. Part of our job is to encourage them to use these pages well, filling them with the good – and sometimes heroic – stories they “write” each day of their lives.
When I speak to grade 7 & 8 students, I’ve incorporated this metaphor into a talk on how each of us choose to live our lives. Now, chances are, as you’re reading this, you’re on a computer of some sort. It might be your home computer, or laptop, cell phone, or maybe an iPod touch or an iPhone. Regardless of what you’re using, it’s fundamental design is built upon something called binary code. Binary code is computer programming system built on 1′s and 0′s, where 1′s mean a circuit is completed and 0 mean’s a circuit is not. The more of these switches you string together, the more possibilities you have (1 switch has 2 options, 2 switches mean 4 options, and it grows exponentially each time you add one more switch.) Every program we have, at it’s very essence, runs these switches – hundred, thousands, and even millions of them – so we can text message, talk on facebook, or play a video game. Each time you type a letter on your keyboard, there are 8 switches that are tripped in order for it to show up on the screen.
As Christians, we’re also built on a similar kind of ‘code.’ In our case, it’s not a case of 1′s and 0′s - but instead on the choice to love or not to love. St. John of the Cross says that “at the end of our lives, we will be judged by our love.“ Coming back to the idea that God has given us a page to write each day- at the end of the day, we can look back and see the moments where we’ve chosen to love God (or not to love God) and where we’ve chosen to love our neighbour (or not to love our neighbour.) And as we fill in pages and chapters in the story of each of our lives, our character is being formed by whether we’ve “completed the circuit,” and chosen to love… or closed the circuit, and chosen not to love.
I know I’m crossing to metaphors to do this, but the point is this: we make choices every day that shape our character. Our character is who we are. The choices that you make each day form who you are, who you are becoming in the sight of those you love – and in the sight of God. It’s how we fill in the blank page God gives us with each new day. It blows my mind to watch different people - good people - who know better make choices that harm themselves or those they love. They are filling in page after page, writing a story of a person they aren’t proud of. What story do you want to tell with your life?
This metaphor is on my mind, because today, we celebrated the retirement of one of my bosses, Mel Malowany, the soon-to-be former superintendent of Evergreen Catholic Schools. I believe that I was the last person he hired, in late November, to do youth ministry in 6 of Evergreen’s 9 Catholic schools which stretch from Devon through Spruce Grove, Stony Plain, and Westlock… all the way to Hinton. I’m still getting my feet wet and figuring out what a youth minister does for a school board, and I was touched deeply as he mentioned me by name in his final speech to the staff and invited guests. Later on in the reception he encouraged me to do great things in a division he has dedicated the bulk of 35 years of his life, and the bulk of his working life. I heard colleagues, coworkers, and invited guests share about how well Mel has used so many of his pages to impact hundreds of teachers and thousands of students… and also his wife, three children, and three grandchildren. I’m grateful in so many ways for the opportunity he’s handed to me as one of his last projects as superintendent, and I’m a little saddened that my opportunity to work with him was so brief.
You are writing a story with your life, each and every day. You do so with the choices you make publically for all to see… and with the choices you make in private, where no one but God and you know what is going on. Is the story you’re writing one you’d be proud of? One others would be excited to read? What does it reveal about the height, width, and depth of your love (or lack thereof)?
Today, you’ve been given a clean page. Please, don’t waste it.
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