Whether it’s a movie, a novel, a picture book, or a tale spun around the dining room table, people are drawn to stories. In I Corinthians 10, the Apostle Paul looks back on one of the most well-known stories of his people, their wilderness wandering. He uses the important images there to illustrate sobering truths for a fledgling church.
Unconsciously, we do the same thing when we look back on our own stories. Events that seemed trivial at the time reveal themselves, on further inspection, to have been pivotal moments. Periods of time that seemed to have been empty and without purpose—surprise! They were no more devoid of activity and life than a drop of pond water viewed under a microscope.
We are a storytelling family, composing on-the-spot homespun tales, filling up the long minutes of road trips with audiobooks, laughing together over replays from crazy conversations, and delighting in glory moments together after the fact. As our family continually rotates in wider orbits, stories have become the fibers that connect us and keep us known to one another.
Story has a way of capturing the imagination. Biography brings theological principles, life lessons, and spiritual wisdom to life as we bear witness to the grittiness lived out in a transformed journey. Poor choices and besetting sins become cautionary signposts that might just keep us from going over the same cliff.
The story arc of another life lends courage from the past to a present-day decision. Missionary and author Patricia St John was dismayed by her own unspectacular “call” to serve God. She said, “I had simply done the obvious next thing. I had prayed about it and truly desired to do God’s will, but there was no special confirmation, and the thought nagged me.” Her continued faithfulness to the tasks God placed before her confirmed her calling, and she concluded that “he never promised a voice when the path lay clear and straight ahead. He gives us common sense and normal human indications and the quiet sense of his guidance. But when we come to the fork in the road, then the promise rings true: ‘Thine ears shall hear a voice behind thee saying, ‘This is the way, walk ye in it.'”
Biography brings theological principles and spiritual wisdom to life as we bear witness to the grittiness of a transformed journey. Poor choices and besetting sins become cautionary signposts to keep us from going over the same cliff.
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In Her Words
Patricia St John is best known for writing Treasures of the Snow and other fictional tales for children. In Her Words is the story of her life, the story behind all the other stories. In it, the reader discovers the rich soil from which all her other writing grew.
At every step along the way, St John’s life bears witness to the sacredness of simply doing the next right thing. When she “longed for something comforting and reassuring” to read to the children in her care, “but there seemed to be nothing of that kind of any literary merit,” she wrote The Tanglewoods’ Secret, her first novel, to read to the children around the fire at night. When her brother, a missionary doctor in Tangier, needed an assistant, she went, the first step in a lifelong career of service that took her all over the world.
The book begins with warm and often hilarious memories from St John’s childhood and ends with poignant and deeply wise reflections at the end of a full life: “As life draws on towards evening and one looks back over the years… at first, standing alone, it is easy to see nothing but the failures, the mistakes, the might-have-beens and to ask what, if anything, has been achieved. But then Christ comes and stands beside us and says, ‘Look with me.'”
Because Patricia St John invested her life in the business of cooperating with God to redeem the stories of others, she knew for sure God can redeem all the parts and pieces of every person’s story. There is no better news.
Holding You in the Light,
At every step along the way, Patricia St John’s life bears witness to the sacredness of simply doing the next right thing. In Her Words (via @10Publishing) is her story. @10ofthoseusa
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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Associate, which means that whenever you purchase a book I’ve shared here through the link I provide, I’ll receive a very small commission. It doesn’t cost you more, and I only share books here that I can wholeheartedly recommend.
Many thanks to 10Publishing, a division of 10ofthose.com, for providing a copy of this book to facilitate my review, which is, of course, offered freely and with honesty.
While I love stories and personal/family stories, I find I am not a great storyteller but my husband’s aunt sure is. She often has us in stitches over her stories and remembrances. Some people just really have that storytelling gift.
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My 54 year old daughter is prepping to go on her first mission trip to Dominican Republic. When she volunteered several months ago she had no idea of the intensity of the training she would receive. The Primary objective is to work with women who have escaped sex slavery and help work on a safe house they are building. But in her last meeting she found out she has to be prepared with her testimony because another primary goal is to shore up the missionaries who live there who are always feeling a sense of despair and exhaustion. I think it will be a life changing experience for her. Those who choose this life are another kind of brave.
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Sounds like a great book! I think we do look for that concrete confirmation which may come at the time, but like you said, it is usually in the looking back, not forward.
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