Others May Get STuck In Scenes Of Our Lives, Not God

​Do you have any scenes in your life people use to tell the whole story of your life?

I do.

Divorce is certainly one of them.

There are people who didn't spend one second inside my 22 year marriage, yet somehow feel like they know my marriage story based on watching my divorce scene.

I have also made some poor choices throughout my life fueled by addictions and unhealthy habits. These are scenes I wish didn't exist but scenes I also know aren't the whole story. A lot of habits and addictions are born in unresolved pain, not in some wild desire to adopt addictions and unhealthy habits. Pain is often the unknown scenes that make addiction stories incomplete.

I always think of Andy Dufresne in the movie Shawshank Redemption. Dufresne is convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, and portrayed as cold and emotionless during the trial. Most people assumed he was guilty because of that portrayal.

But the movie goes on to show us the real Andy Dufresne. It shows us we didn't know the real Andy; we had no idea the stories that were written before the courtroom portray and those that would be written after that scene so harshly judged.

I think it's also reasonable to note that not only do outsiders judge our whole stories based on individual scenes, but we often do that to ourselves.

We make decisions or choices that leave us feeling guilt or shame, and we fail to give ourselves grace for the scenes that contributed to these choices, and at the same time fail to recognize that there are more scenes to be written in the story that currently feels like guilt and shame.

The story is never over.

Think of Peter.

Peter, one of Jesus’ closest disciples, denies Jesus three times during His trial, even swearing that he doesn’t know Him. It's a heartbreaking scene, one of Jesus' most loyal followers, best friends, betraying him out of fear.

Yet, one of the first things Jesus does after he rises from the dead is repair this bond between him and Peter, and then Peter would go on to become one of the boldest leaders of the early church.

Jesus knew the betrayal scenes in Peter's story, but what Jesus leaned into more than those scenes was Peter's WHOLE story. He knew who Peter was before those betrayal scenes, and he knew who he needed Peter to become after those scenes.

There are people in your life who don't know your whole story. There are days YOU don't fully recognize and give grace to your whole story.

But God knows it. In every single moment, and in ever single scene of your life, God knows the whole story.

And the beautiful thing is, our God, unlike humans, does not get stuck on scenes. Our God doesn't hold against us a bad moment or day or month or year. Our God is too busy adding grace to the scenes we've lived and writing the story of our scenes to come to spend any time judging or wrestling with us over any particular scene in our lives.

It's a beautiful and healing thing to know that when we are judged by others or judged by ourselves over a particular scene, that it was just that - a scene.

Maybe others want to call that scene the whole story. Maybe there are days even you call it so.

But God never does.

To God a scene is always a scene.

Move on, he's nudging us.

Move on from the scene and keep living the story God is trying to write.