I like history a lot.
A reason why I like history is because of the aspect of it being the story. Events take place and they are then portrayed with attention to particular details that assist the story being told. In as much as there’s a desire to be ‘objective’ or ‘impartial’ the issue is still about getting the story across and all that goes with it. As such the storyteller has choices to make that can affect how others will receive and understand that story.
There is some debate about what others have done with a long held and admired history. Different agendas now paint events of the past in a very different way. War heroes are seen as profiteers who capitalised on opportunities to extend the reach of influence. Stories of independence are seen as efforts of emerging elites to detach themselves from established elites and maintain a different type of rule. Peoples and nations are seen in different lights that determine whether or not sympathy or antipathy is merited.
Personally, it would be very easy for others to write my story in a way that painted them as the reason for anything good in me and any setback or flaw being down to what is typically me when I don’t pay attention to them. Likewise, I could very well be minded to write my story as a struggle against everyone that I had to overcome on my own and against all odds.
The truth remains that I am here to write this blog entry only by the grace of God. I am not as bad as I have often beaten myself up for being. I am not as great as I have sometimes deluded myself into thinking. A clearer understanding of who I am has always come when I took the eyes off me and looked to Jesus. Jesus as recorded on scripture. Jesus as someone who is the Son of the Living God sent to highlight the sin of humanity and the solution to that sin being faith in Him and following Him to be reconciled to God and have the Holy Spirit guiding and shaping from within so we can be the children of God.
That story shapes the view of history. Important events of history are now more about what helps to see the gospel proclaimed and the Kingdom expressed. History is not about the events that others portray, it is about what God has done and where we have strayed from Him but how His purposes bring us back to Him and keeps us pursuing His will.
How would you write your story if the gospel of the Kingdom is the guiding principle? 🤔
For His Name’s sake
C. L. J. Dryden
Shalom
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