I was struck by something I realized only as I sat down to write this piece: Many of my favorite authors have not only written stories—they have also written extensively about storytelling.

Among them are Frederick Buechner, G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, Flannery O’Connor and Ralph McInerny. Each one of them practiced the art and craft of writing stories, and each of them wrote separately on the significance and importance of stories.

It occurs to me that one reason I’m drawn to these authors is that their interest in stories was deeply connected to their understanding that each of us is a character in a story whose author is the God of all creation. And that fact teaches us—among many other things—two important truths.

First, it teaches us that the details of our lives matter. These particulars, what C.S. Lewis calls “the net” of a story, include “the events, the characters, the background descriptions” developed by the author—all of which allow us to be drawn into a story.

And if details are important in stories, then they are also important in our stories. Where are we? Who has God placed in our lives? What challenges are we invited to confront and overcome? These details aren’t incidental to the story. They are the story. “All those concrete details of life,” Flannery O’Connor writes, “make actual the mystery of our position on earth.”

Which brings me to the second point. Within this constellation of the details that make up our story, God also invites us to have agency. In other words, in some mysterious way, we get to participate in the overall story God is writing. We get to act. We get to decide. We get to say to God: “Help me to understand the role you have made for me—and then give me to the courage to play my part.”

Much more could be said, but I’ll leave the final word about stories to Frederick Buechner, from his sermon, appropriately titled The Truth of Stories:

“All our stories are in the end one story, one vast story about being human, being together, being here. Does the story point beyond itself? Does it mean something? What is the truth of this interminable, sprawling story we all of us are? . . . . It is to choose to believe that the truth of our story is contained in Jesus’s story, which is a love story. Jesus’s story is the truth about who we are and who the God is who Jesus says loves us. It is the truth about where we are going and how we are going to get there . . . and what we are going to find [when] we finally do.”

I believe we will find the author who has been writing the pages of our story all this time. And when we meet him face to face, I pray that he will say to each of us: “You played your part in my story well and faithfully. Welcome home.”

Narratively Yours,

• #C.S. Lewis
• #Flannery O'Connor
• #G.K. Chesterton
• #God's Story
• #Lent 2026
• #Our Story
• #story
• #writing