We’re working with a definition of story from Donald Miller’s book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: “A character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.” Today we look at the story of Jacob to see some principles of character and transformation at work in scripture. If it’s true that God is an author making beauty and meaning out of our lives, then our story is more than the worst (or best) thing we’ve ever done. It’s also more than the worst thing that’s ever happened to us. Like Jacob, may we find that Someone else is writing our story with us, and that this One has a steadier hand and a better ending in mind.

We close today with a prayer called “He Knows What He Is About” by John Henry Cardinal Newman:

God has created me to do him some definite service;
he has committed some work to me
which he has not committed to another.
I have my mission–
I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.
I am a link in a chain,
a bond of connection between persons.

He has not created me for naught.
I shall do good;
I shall do his work;
I shall be an angel of peace,
a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it,
if I do but keep his commandments.

Therefore I will trust him.
Whatever, wherever I am.
I can never be thrown away.

If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve him;
in perplexity, my perplexity may serve him;
in sorrow, my sorrow may serve him.

He does nothing in vain.
He knows what he is about.