"There’s always a story," she said.  "It’s all stories, really.  The sun coming up every day is a story.  Everything’s got a story in it.  Change the story, change the world."

Terry Pratchett
A Hat Full of Sky

Being sick has a tendency to make me even more introspective than normal (which is saying something.)  I think it has something to do with how one’s body becomes the focal point of one’s day.  You find yourself having internal dialog that goes something like this:

Oh, that’s not functioning correctly.  Oh, my head normally doesn’t feel this way.  Wow, I wish that fluid wasn’t accumulating there like that. 

So this latest virus had me thinking about life and the big-picture type questions.  I just finished reading two interesting yet completely unrelated books.  The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett.  You wouldn’t find these books even in the same neighborhood in your local library or bookstore.  I imagine that a typical reader who would choose one of these book would NOT choose the other.

But I am not your typical reader.

Anyway, The Tipping Point was a non-fiction book about how social epidemics are started and spread.  The author very persuasively argues that when it comes to fashion trends, crime waves, best-selling books, and even the rise and fall of certain diseases, there are always certain personality types and contextual factors at play.  He argues that it is often a small or gradual change or innovation that leads to widespread epidemics.

The other book I read recently, A Hat Full of Sky, was a fictitious fantasy tale by the witty British author, Terry Pratchett.  This sequel to The Wee Free Men was about a young witch in-training who, with the help of a band of tiny, rowdy blue pictsies, goes up against a force of great evil.  This is probably categorized as young adult fiction, but I think most adults would find it entertaining due to Pratchett’s dry sense of humor.  What I found intriguing about this story was one of the sub-themes which explores the power of "story" in our lives.

So what do these two books have in common for me?

I guess they got me wondering AGAIN about the story we find ourselves in?  If you’ve read Brian McLaren or (even better) Lesslie Newbigin than you probably have run across the idea that we are being written into God’s universal story.  We are writing a story of our own as "tour-guides and pilgrims" but this story is not independent of the larger and more glorious context of His story.  It is a small part of it.

I started thinking too about the "tipping point" of a story–especially my own.  At some point (when I was 18 years old in fact) circumstances of my life suddenly changed (due to gradual influences), not externally, but internally.  The plot suddenly twisted and I saw my life within God’s story once again.  Mimicking Jesus resurrection, I was born again into a new storyline.  It has affected most every area of my life ever since.

This is an amazing reality.  If we can change the story (if it can be tipped) we can change the world.  Obviously, "WE" are NOT the ones who makes this story-change possible, but perhaps we are editors who can help people see what they are writing with their lives.  Perhaps we can shed light on the greater story that is being told.

It is cool to witness a person’s story dramatically changing from death to life, from temporal to eternal.  I am so thankful to the Author and Finisher of our faith…for changing the storyline.