Forever
Why? Where do you go, where do you look for answers to questions like this? What helps you to understand life? We all want to do it. We’re all investigators trying to solve the mystery that is our own life. We all ask questions, and we all search for answers. At times, not knowing and not understanding doesn’t bother us because we are locked in our busy schedules, distracted by the details of life or thankful that our life is comfortable at the moment. At other times, not knowing is painful and scary because we are facing something we can’t ignore but are unable to make sense of. Where do you look for meaning and purpose? What do you reach for to give you that inner rest and well-being that every one of us seeks? What unpacks and explains life for you? All of us want to think that what we believe is true. All of us want to think that we are living life the way it is meant to be lived and are prepared for what is to come. But the evidence is that many of us aren’t. The evidence is all around us: something is wrong. I saw this evidence again and again as I sat with clients in life-changing moments of disappointment, anger, confusion, and grief. I helped them tell their stories so I could interpret their sto- ries from the unique perspective of the one story that could make sense of it all: God’s story, unfolded in the pages of the Bible. I listened to the man who had lost his job and in so doing had lost himself, the woman dealing with marriage disappointment, or the person who was simply lost in the middle of his own story. Again and again I sat there thinking, “What I need to do is give eternity back to this person.” It became increasingly clear that many of the people I counseled were struggling because there was a critical element in their story that they either never knew or had completely forgotten. And it wasn’t too long after reaching this conclusion that I began to admit to myself that I was more like the people I counseled than unlike them. Like them, I often lived as an eternity amnesiac. I, too, often lived with the unrealistic expectations and functional hopelessness
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