When we took Daniel back to Wheaton College in early August for the football kick off meeting and dinner Coach Swider gave his inspirational start of the season talk. He talked about the difference in "our story" and "God's story".
He said one year when the football team took its annual missions trip to Senegal, a young Senegalese boy was so impressed with the team that he decided to get enrolled and accepted at Wheaton so he could be on the team too. Coach said he didn't know how his family did it, they were not well off, but he got accepted, came to Wheaton and joined the team. He wasn't a good football player so he never played in a single game, but he was on the team for four years and while he was here he became engaged to be married.
The day before the wedding, the young man was running on the sports track at Wheaton and he fell down and died immediately. I'm guessing he had a bad heart. The father was in route from Senegal at the time to attend the wedding and when he arrived he found that instead of attending his son's wedding the next day he would be attending his son's funeral.
The Coach was just heartbroken and could not imagine the sorrow the father would feel when he arrived and was told what had happened. At the memorial service for the young man, the Coach talked to the father and this is what the father said.
We have a story for our lives, we make plans and carry them out to live our our story. God also has a story for our lives, and in the end it is God's story that prevails. And this was God's story for my son's life.
These sad events in the life of this family from Senegal impresses me first of the faith and trust that the father of the boy displayed in accepting God's will in his son's death. Secondly it made me think of the story of Calvary Church. I remember how we moved into the new location with high hopes and great expectations 12 years ago. How we collectively had "our story" for Calvary Church. We anticipated great growth in the size of our congregation. There were plans for future additions of a worship center, church offices, nurseries, adding more classrooms, even the hope someday of senior and missionary housing. The hopes were high and well meaning. But this was not to be "God's story" for Calvary Church. God's story has us leaving the new location with all of the hopes and plans it had entailed and sharing a building with a gracious group of believers on the other side of town.
So we leave "our story" behind but like the father of the Senegalese boy, we go with faith and trust that this is "God's story" for our Church. We go knowing that God's has changed us to be more of a servant Church to the world than a Church to serve ourselves, We are more aware of our need to love the world we are called to minister to rather than to love the pleasures this world has to offer. We have learned that we must love our fellow members and not let division separate us again.
We are saddened by the loss of "our story", but we know that in the end it is "God's story" that prevails and we want to be as much a part of His story as we can be. May His story and our story blend together into a beautiful story.
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