I like history a lot.
I like history because it is a story. Events take place, and they are then portrayed with attention to particular details that assist the story being told. In as much as there’s a desire to be ‘objective’ or ‘impartial,’ the issue is still about getting the story across and all that goes with it. As such, the storyteller has choices to make that can affect how others will receive and understand that story.
There is some debate about what others have done with a long-held and admired history. Different agendas now paint events of the past in a very different way. War heroes are seen as profiteers who capitalise on opportunities to extend the reach of influence. Stories of independence are seen as efforts of emerging elites to detach themselves from established elites and maintain a different type of rule. Peoples and nations are seen in different lights that determine whether or not sympathy or antipathy is merited.
Personally, it would be very easy for others to write my story in a way that painted them as the reason for anything good in me and any setback or flaw being down to what is typically me when I ignore them. Likewise, I could very well be minded to write my story as a struggle against everyone I had to overcome on my own and against all odds.
The truth remains that I am here to write this blog entry only by the grace of God. I am not as bad as I have often beaten myself up for being. I am not as great as I have sometimes deluded myself into thinking. A clearer understanding of who I am has always come when I take my eyes off myself and look to Jesus. Jesus as recorded in scripture. Jesus, the Son of the Living God, was sent to highlight the sin of humanity and the solution to that sin being faith in Him and following Him to be reconciled to God and have the Holy Spirit guiding and shaping from within so we can be the children of God.
That story shapes our view of history. Important events of history are now more about what helps to see the gospel proclaimed and the Kingdom expressed. History is not about the events that others portray; it is about what God has done, where we have strayed from Him, and how His purposes bring us back to Him and keep us pursuing His will.
How would you write your story if the gospel of the Kingdom is the guiding principle? 🤔
For His Name’s sake
C. L. J. Dryden
Shalom
