I believe that each of us is a walking story.

I am fully convinced that every day you’re simply living the page you’re in and we’re all walking around, scribbling and reading and leaning in and all of the time, every moment, we’re living a story so much bigger than we know.

He’s the greatest Author, you know. He holds the pen and if I’ve said it once I’ve said it one hundred times, every story matters and He isn’t writing the story of your life with a pencil because this God, this Author of the greatest Story ever told, won’t make a mistake.

He has no need for an eraser.

Have you ever started to write something – a text, a tweet, a blog post, a book – and suddenly stopped because you weren’t sure just how to begin? You type or maybe it’s a real life conversation and so you open your mouth, but then there is silence. Your fingers freeze, your mouth hangs open.

How will you begin? What do you lead with? Which words will you choose to set the stage?

I don’t think God hesitated. I could point out one hundred different things and stories from Scripture that would back up my belief in this, but God just doesn’t seem to be a God of hesitation. As far as I can tell, He seems to pretty well know what He’s doing and He’s not always too concerned that I’m in the loop.

But He still knows. He still has a plan. He still is – good and faithful and true and always writing a bigger story than we know.

I have this thing and I’ll blame it on my college Religion minor, but I’m a total nerd when it comes to looking up Bible translations. Have you ever taken a specific verse, passage, or chapter and then cross-referenced it, looked up the Hebrew or Greek, or even just read one translation right next to another?

It’s fascinating, truly.

When I was thinking about the Every Story Matters series from last October and dreaming up what I might write about this year, I kept thinking of titles with three little words. Not surprisingly, I kept thinking of how the Bible, the most important Story ever told and the one that makes every story matter, begins with three little words.

They hint at a much bigger story and have you ever noticed how fairy tales take after this idea?

In the beginning… Once upon a time…

So I looked up Genesis 1:1 in at least 20 translations and then I shared it with you in my intro to this series, how I clicked and searched and read and every version I looked at, every single one, starts out the same way:

In the beginning.

At the beginning of a Story read more than any other, on the first page of a book that has changed more lives and impacted more people than we’ll know on this side of heaven, He simply began. He breathed, He authored, He created.

In the beginning.

More pages would come. The Story was only beginning to be written down and recorded, after all. But I can’t help but pause and wonder what more He has to say with the pages of our lives. Our history is His Story and I think He has more to say to you and to me, through you and through me.

And so may we live. May we write and laugh and all dare to say we’ll live out Philippians 1:9, that we’ll love much and love well. Let’s trust Him in the good and say He is still God in the midst of our mess. May we grow in grace and say we’ll trust the unknown of the future to the God we know is authoring its pages. Because this God? In the beginning He wrote the beginning, knowing full well the ending and every day and page in between.