Straining to See The Bigger Picture

Viewing My Life as an Unfolding Story of God’s Grace

2025 has been a difficult year for Esther and me. Throughout January and half of February, we watched as our only child—our thirty-eight-year-old daughter Jamie—faded into an agonizing death from cirrhosis of the liver, the torturous conclusion to twenty-plus years of severe alcoholism. Then, eight weeks after her death, our church unexpectedly dismissed me from my position as a staff pastor, a role I loved and relished. These two events immersed me in a cumulative sadness that I’m still sorting out. I’ll explore that journey in future posts, but for now I want to focus on my pursuit of a bigger picture.

Wasted on the Young?

One of the by-products of growing old (I’m sixty-six) is that I am only now beginning to understand my life as an unfolding story rather than as a series of unrelated events. As a younger man, I would bounce from one experience and circumstance to the next—like jumping from rock to rock while crossing a stream—never really pausing to consider each episode as it connected to the others.

Maybe this is one of the hazards of being young, this myopic and cavalier—even reckless—way of frolicking through life. It could be argued that such a view is mostly harmless, as long as the events themselves are mostly pleasant. But when the going gets difficult, when unexpected suffering intrudes on my bliss, I’m faced with the risk that my shortsighted worldview could propel me into a future dominated by increasing confusion, disillusionment and, ultimately, deep-rooted bitterness. Is this what people mean when they say that youth is wasted on the young?

As a follower of Jesus, I’m supposed to be freed from such a mindset. Rather than viewing my life as a patchwork of random episodes, Jesus is teaching me—and the Holy Spirit is enabling me—to understand this brief life on earth as our Lord has designed it: as a purposeful and unique story that reflects the incomprehensible grace of God. But as a student, I’m not the quickest study.

The Right Question

These past months, I’ve been resisting the impulse to view my recent hardships as horrible, even unforgivable, injustices. But I have given in to the urge to ask myself the inevitable questions of ‘why?’ and ‘whose fault is it?’ and, maybe the harshest of all questions, ‘where did I go wrong?’ Yet, in my saner moments, I realize that these are not the questions I should be asking, as they simply result in more unanswerable questions.

Instead, as my life continues forward with the years I have left to serve my Lord, I have a better question to ask, the answer to which will keep me advancing safely within His hands: Whether pleasant or painful, how do these events fit within the narrative of my life—a story that Jesus is writing for me?

The Sum of Its Parts?

As I was preparing to deliver my daughter’s eulogy, it occurred to me that it would be unjust and inaccurate to reduce the whole of her life to her struggle with alcohol, or to the underlying factors that drove her to turn to a bottle in her grasping for peace. Our little girl wasn’t the sum total of her mistakes, her struggles, her sins. She also loved Jesus, produced two remarkable little girls of her own and left a legacy of fiercely loyal friendship. Her life—as with each of our lives—is a complex story, filled with its share of suffering and tragedy, to be sure; but it is also a story marked by love, intelligence, wit, comedy, drama, joy, sadness, successes, failures—all the ingredients that mark each of our lives, albeit to uniquely varying degrees. My life is no different and neither is yours.

New Threads

In the lyrics of his song, Every Grain of Sand, Bob Dylan expresses confusion about the distress and anguish of his own life and his ultimate trust that, somehow, God oversees all of it…

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet floods every newborn seed
There’s a dying voice within me reaching out somewhere
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair
Don’t have the inclination to look back on any mistake
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break
In the fury of the moment I can see the Master’s hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand

As I reflect on the various pains and hardships—even tragedies—along the road of my own life and the ongoing difficulties of this year, I do indeed recognize God’s fingerprints. The recent death of my little girl combined with the humiliation of being fired from my church are in themselves deeply painful events. But I have to trust that even these sorrows will assume their proper roles as new threads woven into the tapestry that is my grand story. To consider them as outliers, as isolated miseries, would be to commit a terrible injustice against the ‘chain of events’ that, in my Father’s hands and for His purposes, blend this strange mix of the tragic and the triumphant, the pleasant and the painful, into one remarkable tale.

Could St. Paul actually know what he’s talking about when tells us that “…in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose”? When he says all things, does Paul have in mind the singular narrative of a life surrendered to Jesus, rather than—as I have so often read these words—the seemingly random hardships that periodically arrest my attention?

The Right Author

I’m grateful that I am not the author of my own story—I’m content to leave this to my Father in Heaven. The peace comes in knowing that God’s grace is a very present reality as His guiding hand in my life is undeniable. I don’t know His reasons for what He does or how He does it — but I don’t need to know. If I understand the notion of grace as we see it in the Scriptures, God is pouring out to me gifts that I have no right to expect. It’s true that His gifts sometimes hurt like hell, but in the end that’s okay, because these strangely wrapped gifts serve as His instrument—his chisel—shaping me into the image of Jesus Himself. CS Lewis, in his poem, As the Ruin Falls, says it this way…

The pains You give me are more precious than all other gains.

All God’s gifts, including the pains—maybe especially the pains—do their best work, not in isolation, but in concert, collaborating to create a masterpiece that Jesus Himself is painting. This is His promise and, especially these days, it’s a guarantee I’m hanging onto with a death grip.