The Force of a Story

Author Wendell Berry transforms the ordinary of everyday into wonders too wide for comprehension. 

A humble barber (Jayber Crow) follows Dante’s path through 1950’s Kentucky before discovering that love and heaven dwell together. 

A war widow (Hannah Coulter) gives birth after her husband’s death but finds what it means to truly live. 

A tobacco farmer (Marce Catlett) goes back to work even when his crop yields no compensation. 

It was this last one, Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story, that took a simple tale of tobacco farming and transformed it into the question: What story’s force propels me through my days, keeps me going when I want to quit, and has the pure pluck to stare life in the face and smile?

I thought about it as I drove two boys to summer camp for the first time. They were full of questions about camp, but they also asked me for stories- stories about the land and wheat fields we zoomed past as well as stories about hurricanes, the ocean, and sugar cane, all things they’d never seen. I thought about my parents and my grandparents, all the stories that came before mine. 

I told them about friends harvesting sugar cane with machetes, about the calm in the eye of a hurricane, about the fiery moon rising over the black sea. 

They sit and listen to me tell Bible stories every week, but these were different. It was a little glimpse into the force behind my story and how it all ties into the Gospel Story.

“No matter what story you tell,” the older one said, “they really are all about Jesus.”

They really are. 

He is the Force of every story- the love, the life, and the perseverance in Wendell Berry’s tales as well as the Creator, Refuge, and Savior in the pages of my life. I never would have thought about it if I hadn’t read Berry’s latest novel. 

He is Moses’s Deliverer and David’s King. He is Jeremiah’s Lament and Daniel’s rescuer. He is Peter’s Shepherd, Paul’s Blinding Light, and John’s Alpha and Omega. 

Even for the wiggly boys in the backseat, excited for their first taste of summer camp, Jesus has been the Force of their Story, working to knit them together, order their days, know their names, and put His invitation to know Him into their hands. 

Jesus is also the Force of your story, the meaning behind everything, the purpose for living. 

My children recently were singing the hymn: “This is my story! This is my song! Praising my Savior all the day long!” 

He transforms the ordinary of everyday into wonders too wide for comprehension. Perhaps that is where Berry learned it from!