Untold but not Unwritten
By Bethany Kaldas
‘Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
Psalm 139:16
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.’
Reading a story is a very different experience to being in one.
When you read a story, you can see all the threads connecting the different events, you can see method behind apparent madness, you can often tell the destiny of a character before it happens to them because you know how the author writes or the genre of the book. If you’re reading a romance, an unexpected knock at the door is intriguing, exciting—if you’re reading a horror story and know the author to be especially sadistic, the same event will raise your blood pressure.
But if you were a character in these tales, you’d see things quite differently. Most of the events are fragmented, things come out of the blue and vanish again, apparently without significance, and the story’s end is always a mystery.
We tend to be more like characters than readers when it comes to our own lives. Even when we do draw connections, try to find meaning in the mundane or the miserable or the marvellous, it’s all guesswork at best. We make decisions, often believing to be informed, but we’ll never know all the factors that will impact the results of our choices. We forge our destinies half-blind and a lot more feeble than we’d like to believe.
We can fight as hard as we can for clarity, but at the end of the day, we’ll never know the future until it becomes the present. Whether we like it or not, we’re characters, not readers and not really authors, of our own stories, and that means we live with more questions than answers.
Being a Christian adds another layer of complexity to the questions we have. Ideally, we’d say that believing in God means that God is active in our lives. He’s not a reader, surely! When we get hit with plot twists and complications, He isn’t going to sit idly by eating popcorn and watching in surprise. He’ll be there. He’ll do something.
‘Then, when Mary came where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying to Him, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”’
John 11:32
Mary, the sister of Lazarus and Martha, was a woman of faith. She believed that God was with her and her family, and when her brother became ill, I’m sure she had no doubt that Christ could save the day. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have sent for Him to come to them when Lazarus got sick. And any normal person, upon hearing that a dear friend was gravely ill, would rush to their side, especially if there was something you could to help.
‘Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when He heard that he was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was.’
John 11:56
Did you see that? Jesus hears that Lazarus is sick, his sisters are scared, they need Him to help…and He waits. One might not think Jesus a very good friend, except the writer makes it clear that Christ loved these people, and it was because He loved them that He waited.
We all know how this story ends. We know Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead and that this ends up being one of the most important miracles that He ever performs in His ministry. But Mary and Martha didn’t know that. They didn’t know how their story was going to end, and it’s the not knowing that makes it so much harder to trust.
‘Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.’
C. S. Lewis
The truth is, although all of us are confident that God is not merely a reader, most of us see Him as a character. A big, strong character, sure, but a character nonetheless. We can’t see the whole story, only the chapter we’re in, and we seem to think that’s all God can see too. Or at least, that’s how we behave much of the time.
‘If you truly believe that it is actually God who has brought you to this place, then entrust Him with your cares and cast on Him all your concerns; and He will dispose your affairs as He wills.’
Sts Barsanuphius and John, Letters from the Desert
Perhaps that’s why we seem to think we’ve been abandoned when we feel alone, or that we’re being punished when things go wrong, or that we’ve been forgotten when our prayers are met with silence and heartache. We don’t admit it, but sometimes, when the plot has taken a nasty, unexpected turn, we feel God must’ve been just as surprised as we are—or else, surely it wouldn’t have happened. We see God as the hero—or maybe, sometimes, the villain—of our story, but not the author.
‘You may fear that the Lord has passed you by, but it is not so: he who counts the stars, and calls them by their names, is in no danger of forgetting his own children. He knows your case as thoroughly as if you were the only creature he ever made, or the only saint he ever loved. Approach him and be at peace.’
Charles Spurgeon
Every day of our lives, our stories are being told. We are living each page, each word, for the first time, completely unaware of what that next paragraph is going to say. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been written yet. Even the most cleverly written tales are not mysteries to their authors.
Even when you can’t see where the story is going, He can. And unlike actual book characters, we don’t have to worry about our author being some sadistic psychopath who just likes to watch people suffer for the sake of added drama. We know who our author is. We know He wants the best for us. And unlike Mary and Martha when Lazarus died, we know how the story will end. He told us that the end of this story is only the beginning of a much bigger, much better one. Spoilers, the best kind.
‘…now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.’
C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle
‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.’
Revelation 21:4
The key is remembering that the happy ending is coming, no matter how rough the tale itself is, and that the author Himself is on this adventure with us. And if you can find it in you to trust Him, even in the rough passages, you’ll start to see Him more and more in every word.
‘When I trust deeply that today God is truly with me and holds me safe in a divine embrace, guiding every one of my steps I can let go of my anxious need to know how tomorrow will look, or what will happen next month or next year. I can be fully where I am and pay attention to the many signs of God’s love within me and around me.’
Henri Nouwen