Follow Friday and (eventually) Book Blogger Hop

If you could write yourself a part in a book what role would it be and what role would you play?

You know, I would love it if my life read like a fiction story! At the end all the loose ends would be tied up. I would know just who the bad guys are and who the good guys were and I’d know why they made the choices they did. I would be rewarded for my good decisions and punished for the bad. It would be nice if my life were mapped like a nice, tight plot.
Too often though, I don’t know the why behind the action of those people around me, and it confuses me. I don’t know if a bad experience is going to lead to the epiphany that helps me find the meaning behind it all. Once one of my students asked me if I believed that everything happened for a reason. I answered, “No.”

As I do have a strong faith in God I wondered if these two beliefs were in contradiction with each other. I do know that God watches out for us and prepares pathways for us, and that he cares for us. Yet, sometimes stuff happens and we never know the reason why. Sometimes those things that happen don’t improve our lives, and in fact make it worse. Better yet, sometimes really good things happen and there really isn’t anything we have done to deserve it. There is no reason or why. The blessing just is— there is nothing we could have done to merit some things.

Yet, I sometimes hope at the end of my life I’ll be able to look at the good and the bad and make sense of it all. I hope that I can look back as Joseph of Egypt, who got sold into slavery by his brothers. He had a lot of crappy stuff happen to him, but each experience he had lead him to his next position in life, until finally he was the right hand man to Pharaoh. Then he was able to save his family (not to mention the population of more than one nation) from starvation, because he had counseled pharaoh to save up a huge supply of grain during his seven years of plenty. His faith in God allowed him to accept and find the best of each situation, and his faith that God had made his experiences for his good allowed him to forgive his brothers. I only aspire to have that kind of faith.



This week the book blogger hop asks:

What is the longest book you have ever read?

I think that would have to be the Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien.