about loving story

One of the greatest sensations is to listen to a song, or watch a movie, or read a poem or novel and think -- this is a story that gets me. 

I love stories, and I think most others do also, because they validate our lives and give us purpose.  We love stories because they draw out the longings and hurts of our hearts, and in doing so they makes us feel known because they name them.

Maybe this is a silly and overly simple revelation, but I was reading those words pictured from the book of Job out-loud to my roommates tonight (because they were too beautiful to keep to myself), and it hit me: this is my story. This bible.  These gorgeous words and lives and events and thoughts and truths written down so long ago.

This is the greatest story. It just is.

This is the story that every other story seeks to tell, whether it knows it or not.

Every desire I have, every longing for justice, for peace, for beauty -- all of it finds creation inside this book.  These words are the echoing, lovely, bird-call response to those parts of my soul that whisper out for answer.  These words are the end all, be all; they are conflict resolution; they are character development and monsters being defeated and plot twists that leave my heart soaring from victory.  All of it is there.  It is my story.  Those pages, they are as good as flesh and bone for me.  They are as active as pulse, they are as vital as air.

This story gets me, in a way nothing else can.

And it is wholly privilege to read those words, to love them, and to find even my tiny life folded into the story that is there.