There Is A Bigger Story
Have you ever seen a leaf caught in an eddy current at the side of a river? It doesn’t matter how fast and powerful the main river current is flowing down the centre; the leaf circles close to the bank. Sometimes the leaf even floats backwards!
Meditating on the miracle of Christ this season has been a powerful awakening for my soul to the bigger story. Too often, in 2025, I have been living out of my small story. My financial challenges, my work trials, my unused gifts, my struggles with sin… small, small, small. It feels like I have been that leaf floating in circles, when I should have been plumb in the centre of the eternal current, hurtling downstream in the unfolding glorious eternal story that God is writing across the cosmos.
Christ is with us! Emmanuel is with me!! He has invaded my small existence and drawn me into His eternal plot. It is no longer about me. It is about Him and His reconciliation of all time and space to Himself. All is being reconciled to Christ. And I get to be a part of that!
But oh Lord, my eyes so often drift from His greatness to my smallness… From His infinitude to my lack. Oh Lord, I drift to the edges and get stuck in a little circling current… round and round but going nowhere.
My heart’s prayer for 2026 is to live out of the bigger story.
After the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, the mundane events of life must have taken on a new significance for the family… A new sacredness. Feeding and cleaning their baby boy… sacred. Teaching him to talk and watching him explore the world… sacred. And what about the normal challenges of life? Feeding a family. Finances. Paying taxes. I imagine there must have been a deep sense of God-with-them, that everything would work out because God had His hand on their lives. I imagine that the things that might have seemed like big things before were now trivial in the shadow of stewarding the arrival of the Messiah.
That’s what I mean by living out of the bigger story. The things that are big things for those who do not walk with God should be trivialities for those of us who do. Otherwise, who is Christ to us? Job security? Trivial. Mortgage payments? Trivial. Political upheaval? Trivial. We are stewarding the Presence of God in this world. We are stewarding the second coming of Christ! Are our eyes on Him? Are we attending to His plans? Are we tending to Him? I know I am guilty of living out of my small story way more than the Eternal Current.
Oh Jesus, keep me in the centre of the river! Hold my face in Your hands that my eyes may ne’er drift from Your face. Let me be aware of your Presence in the marrow of my bones that all the affairs and challenges of this temporality may grow dim in comparison to Thee. Smite me with Your love. Aflame my heart for You only. Burn to dust every distraction and rogue desire that tempts my eyes from Thy Beauty. Oh, unmake me until my soul is a song of worship to You only; an eternal haunting ballad written in flesh, primal and pure.
Let my song be a drop in the river; one of a billion drops, making playful melody over smooth pebbles, interludes building suspense in shadowy pools, and pore-raising crescendos of glorious cascading waterfalls. Until we all empty our lives into the Sea of Eternity.
There is a bigger story, my friend.
