The Story They’re In
Children see themselves in stories. All people do, but the thing that makes this something to be accounted for especially in children is that the stories haven’t hardened yet. Kids are still putting together their assumptions about what the world is and what they are in it. A child watches his parents, his grandparents, his siblings, YouTube videos, PBS Kids, the boy across the street, and everyone and everything else he can as he puts together what kind story he is in. What sort of a world is this, and where is it going, and why?
If my son sees me come home from work every day sullen and downcast, complaining about the difficulties of the day and always irritable towards him, I shouldn’t be surprised to see him begin to believe that he is in a story of a world with unfair plights put upon people who don’t deserve it, a story of grievances. And because that is not the story we are all in, I have lied to my son about the entire world, I have unwittingly deceived him about life itself, all by moping at the end of the day every weekday for a year.
The truth is that we are in a world crafted by a good God and now filled with pain and evil because of our rebellion against His good commands. That good, wise, and just God has never stopped governing every single thing that happens around us and inside us. And in His unimaginable mercy He has taken on flesh like ours and lived in perfect righteousness as a man and died in agony as a man on a Roman cross. As He did, He was taking on all God’s proper and fitting wrath for our lies and self-pity and murders and disobedience and pride and adulteries and gossiping and hatreds. Every last man, woman, and child who trusts in the man who is God and God’s Son, Jesus Christ, stands totally clean before a God who has chosen to pardon and adopt wicked people like us. We are in the story of a beautiful, wrecked world that is being rescued by her Maker and will one day be remade with every scar turned to a jewel and every tear converted into a memorial commemorated in an eternal hymn. We are in the story of a rescuing God who is Father, Son, and Spirit.
Our kids need to know that’s what they’re in. Every act of Congress, every unjust crime, every birthday present and grandma’ hug and stomach flu and scary dream and boring, rainy Saturday is a word in that story. The wondrous God who decided that green would be the color of plants and blue the color of sky and water and who authored language and polar bears and hydrogen and red dwarf stars and memory, that God has placed our children in the middle of that humming, buzzing, singing, weeping, hurting, hoping story about Himself. That’s where they are.
There are countless teens who believe they are in stories in which they are main characters, and TikTok and YouTube and Instagram are tools that can be used to build up a ramshackle structure of that sort of narcissism. But just like a life of irritation or self-pity, a life of looking for more and more attention to be drawn to one’s self is a life lived in a false story. It’s not the tale you’re actually in. None of us are the main character in this creation that is groaning and awaiting Christ’s second return. We all have speaking parts and dialogue to give and significance, but we are not the hero, and the climax does not fall to us. And since we weren’t built to be the main character, a life looking for happiness in attracting attention will typically be a frantic and discontented life.
We are not in stories of grievance or despair or our own fame. We are in the vast, grand story of the God of Jesus Christ. Our kids should know that, and be taught to love it, and prayed over that the live might be real and granted to them by the God who loves to bring dead hearts to life and give blind people eyes to see.