Frodo could not be a hero unless he was born into a story with many chapters already played out before his own. His moment derives its weight and urgency from the moments [and people] that have come before.
John Eldredge. Epic: The Story God Is Telling
…so do my moments, so does everyone elses. Seeing the weight, and “urgency” is the difficult part in many of our lives, we’ve been innoculated, trained, programmed, habitualized, numbed…to the epic world around us…to the urgency of injustice, to the power of helping others in need, to the beauty of a tree, to the evil that needs to be stopped.
These inoculations aren’t necessarily evil or wrong…life happens…we spend our days working for others, to make a paycheck, to put money somewhere, to gain some free time because somehow, someway, our hours are already spoken for…these things exhaust us and blind us, and weaken us, and distract us from the epic story of our lives, on both the small “i can make someones day by paying for their coffee” and grand “the political, technological, business, state, government issues i can be a part of” scale…instead, we want tv, games, pizza, and beer, which are great and fine, but not as a panacea [cure-all] for our feelings, and a veil over the story we’re in and not appropriate if continually consumed [weeks and months] to ignore that story we’re in, in other words, used as a continual escape.
We only perpetuate the sense that we’re insignificant, and there’s no point taking part in this story, that it’s all random, when we constantly hide from the consciousness that our world is epic, that we can be a hero, that we were meant to be a hero in our story right now, as the chapters have unfolded before us, and our situations right now have put us in a unique position to fight evil, and be part of something special from the small, to grand scale.
[Seriously, while the word epic conveys grandiose actions that you think you can’t perform, spending an afternoon with someone, offering a ride, paying for a coffee…these things are important parts of putting our epic story on display]
Wake up! You, me, everyone can be a hero in this story we are living, yes everyone, you have the power to see it, and live it, it’s up to you to choose to see it, and live it and be aware of something greater, and then act like it.
In order to see it you’ll need to continually strive to see it, but you’ll be rewarded for it, our mind need renewing.
[Hint & quote, “The world is rigged in such a way … that life does not work when it’s all about you.”]
Tip: Reading the Bible, reading about Jesus’ life helps awaken the story we’re in, and the things we can do to be a part of it, to be important, valued, happy, fulfilled in a wholesome way, to be “saved” … and I’m so thankful for that, for Jesus example, and to be part of God’s story, the thing we call life.