A New Chapter in Life

In order to avoid the on again off again rain showers that the hurricane in the gulf has sent our direction I headed to Richland Mall today after lunch to get my daily walking in. On my first trip down the mall I was stopped by a woman working this pagoda for Dead Sea products. Now normally I would just tell these people that I wasn't interested and keep walking but for whatever reason this day I decided to stop and humor her. After listening to her sales pitch and endeavoring greatly to not buy her product, I moved on. Every time that I would make the lap in the mall she and her fellow worker would try and get me to buy their stuff. I may buy some one day, just don't really have the extra money to spend on something I don't really need right now. So on about the 4th trip around I stopped to ask the girl (her name is Nicole) a little bit about her because I figured, hey why not, I don't usually meet people outside of Truett, might as well work on this shy thing while I'm working on this healthy thing. While I was talking to her I noticed that she had a tattoo behind her ear of a Star of David with Hebrew writing underneath so I asked her what it meant. She said that it stood for "a new chapter in life." For those interested, it turns out that her mom is Jewish and that she's a Catholic from El Paso.

This post isn't really about her though. Not really about my walking the mall either. Her tattoo however, led me to think about where I am at in life. Seems like there are many of us that are starting a new chapter in life. The fellas (Randall, myself, JT, and Omari) have all decided that we are not happy with where we are at physically and as far as health goes and have all started taking steps to improve that. My friends back home are trying to start a new chapter in their ministries after the split that the church has gone through. My aunt is having to start a new chapter in her life because my uncle decided to cheat on her and he is moving out. Other friends are feeling God's call more clearly than they did before and while what they feel called to may not be a popular thing in some cases, they feel strongly that they have heard His call clearly and are moving towards that call. For some of us, this new chapter may mean letting things go that we love. For others it may mean taking up causes that are not popular. For still others it may mean taking on things we would not normally take on. Regardless of what it is, we are starting the next chapters of our lives. In this story book we call life, we are always moving towards the next chapter, until we reach the back cover of the book.

What will our story look like though? Is it a science fiction masterpiece? A romantic comedy? A tragedy the likes of which has not been seen since Shakespeare? Unfortunately for us, we don't know how much longer we have to write in this story book. We can only hope that when we reach the end, we will have a complete story. Every story will look different, but hopefully every story will have a central element that is the same. The chapter about the life changing moment. The chapter where certain death looks imminent for the main character, and where all hope looks like it has been lost. This is the chapter where salvation arrives in the form of a hero. Someone who has been a part of the story but has seemed like they were just there to ruffle feathers and keep the reader on their toes. Until one day, he stepped in front of the moving vehicle to protect the main character. Until he sacrificed his life to save the lives of others. This is the chapter we hope becomes a part of every story. You see this chapter is quite clearly about Jesus and his grace. The grace that abounds within our lives. The grace that we hope others will find in their lives. You see it's a part of the story that just makes the story come together. It makes the story come alive.

You see, when that chapter is in the book somewhere, every story has a happy ending.

Pastor Coco