Paragraphs and Pages

Relient K has a song called "Life After Death and Taxes." There's a lyric in the song that reads "this is how I choose to live, as if I'm jumping off a cliff, knowing that You'll save me." Powerful. Crazy.

In a book I read called Jasmine, there's a teenage character named Du. Du is an adopted Vietnamese teenager who's lived through the worst. We find out that Du has been tortured, held in a prison camp, shot, abandoned, and forced to be on the run as an orphan for much of his childhood. After coming to America and being adopted, Du attends a high school where his life finally has peace. The narrator, Jasmine, scoffs at the surprise of the school administration when they see that Du is "doing well." Jasmine suspects that the folks at the school believe that Du should do badly because of his past, yet she knows it is Du's past that allows him to succeed. She questions why Du would have a problem with an abridged and modified version of "A Tale of Two Cities" when he has already lived through hell. Jasmine explains to us that Du has "always shot with live ammunition; never been able to use safety nets; and has always lived without multiple choice."

Du has quite the story. After being adopted into a family that resides in a rural Iowa farm town, it is no surprise to find Du near the end of the book leaving home for a hitchhiking journey to Los Angeles to find his sister. There was more to be written for Du.

That is all fiction. Yet what is true for Du is also true for us. We've lived. We've been places. We've experienced tragedy and sorrow. We've seen the brilliant daylight of joy. We've tasted. We've heard. We know, albeit slightly, the mathematics of humanity. We're here. Thriving. And it is in this living that we find Matt Theissen, jumping off of cliffs. He is unafraid. Why? What brings a man who has lived, known, tasted, seen, experienced, to take such leaps? Theissan's cliff jumping is not safe. Du's expedition to Los Angeles, though we never learn of the result, is clearly risky as well. For both Du and Matt, the answer was not in front of them. It was at the end of a road of hardships. At the end of a whole essay of living.

Nobody likes the word essay. It conjures up images of tests we're never quite prepared enough for, trains of thought derailing, and the frantic scrawling of nonsense that somehow becomes coherent enough to earn you that precious "A," or in my case, that acceptable "B." But, an essay always starts the exact same way. A piece of paper waiting to be filled. Multiple choice tests are quite different. Placed in front of us is a packet of information with the correct answers laying right there for the taking. If only we can discern them. When we look at life, which way do we find ourselves living? I tend to lean towards the essay.

I see my life before me as a blank page, waiting to be penned out. I see life as more than just a series of questions and answers. Life doesn't come to me as chunks of words and sentence fragments, but as paragraphs and pages. Du's story had been shaped by his experiences in Vietnam, and would continue to be written as he sought out his sister in LA. Our story is shaped by what was written in the past and the pen keeps moving. There is a frightening inevitableness to it all.

When we look back upon the story that has already been written, what do we see? A life of greatness? A life of adventure? A life of meaning? I want to truly live. I want to fall backwards into the wind knowing there's nothing there to catch me. That's the kind of story I want. Do you feel that? It's the call that beckons us to jump off that cliff. It comes from deep inside of us. Our very soul longs for the adventure of full life. We can hear the call all around us; in the movies we make, in the ways we speak, in the songs we sing. We want more.

In the book of the Bible called John, Jesus tells us that He has come to give life. But not just regular life. Life in abundance. Life to the full. To live fully, we have to take the life of Jesus. Yet, we cannot have two lives. We cannot live our life and let Jesus live through us too. In short, we have to die. We have to kill the flesh and let God take the pen. Jesus tells us elsewhere in the Bible that He is the way, the truth, and the life. If we experience life at all, it's just a piece of Jesus.

The awesomeness of a story, the validity of an essay, depends on who the author is. I don't know about you, but when it comes to the story of life, I'm a terrible writer. So I gave God the pen. If you've ever read the Bible, you know that Yahweh is a God of adventure, joy, peace, and victory. He is a God who writes the kind of story we yearn for. Matt Theissen jumps off cliffs "knowing that You'll save him." He knows the full life Christ has given him. I'm discovering it as well.

Look at reality and see it for what it is. We live a life where we shoot with live ammunition. We walk tightropes with no safety nets. We live without multiple choice. There is no guesswork, only blank space that is quickly being filled with ink. These words make up pieces of the story God is writing with my life, if only when I allow Him.

What you read here is a series of thoughts that represent my dying and Christ's living. May you find Him in my words.