I'm a Character - Part 2

(Part 2 of some thoughts on Donald Miller's book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.)

Remember the day that you met your spouse, collided into that stranger, or you suddenly lost your job?

Those are what Miller would call “inciting incidents.” I am connecting quotes from a longer segment but this is the short of what he says: “An inciting incident is an event that forces your character to move; it’s the thing that throws your character into the story...It’s how you get them to do something and the doorway through which they can’t return…otherwise the story never happens.”

I thought this idea of forcing the character to move to be very interesting. Maybe because it’s a bit offensive. I mean, we would all like to think that we are motivated and self-assured and we can do what we want in life whenever we want to and that we are not lazy or living meaninglessly. But alas I think for most human beings, we must be forced to move, to change. Even the will power for the goals we have spent time scribbling meticulously is weak and must be renewed daily or else we forget and they fade away.

And when he says forced, he means going through the door of an unexpected circumstance. Something comes into our lives – a person, an issue, a trial, a choice, a change – and we must now react and live out a response or change direction. We might not have chosen it. It might appear good or bad; we might call it a blessing or a curse. But it’s a circumstance and the purpose is to change us. It’s meant to force. Meant to move us. Meant to propel us off the internal and external couches in our lives.

I just smiled because when I wrote that I had a visual in my head of like a beat up frat house or something, with a couch randomly hanging out in the front yard. We’ve got internal couches in our hearts that we sit on and don’t deal with our thoughts or convictions or beliefs and we just sit there. And we’ve got external couches which are like the times we do nothing when we clearly should act and when we take the sidelines when God has said to go and be courageous.

I hate my worn couches in my house and my raggedy couches in my yard.

I hate that they have those indentions that make them sag in the middle. I need to ask the Lord what I have been sitting on, in my heart and in my life. What does he need to change in my heart and in my living?

I need to pay attention to the inciting incidents in our lives right now, trying to force me to move. To grow. To see the Lord. To become more like him. Do I let the incident totally throw off my “quiet time” and I stop praying and go all wild inside with worry and anxiety? Or do I allow this incident to move me to trust? Move me to believe upon who God is? Move me to a courageous faith that God can take this mysterious, unknown, scary circumstance and use it to mold our story into something new, something for his glory and our good – good as he define it.

These are the circumstances the Lord has allowed. The inciting incidents that in some cases he has allowed and in some cases he has written. He is sovereign. Whether they are sufferings or blessings, He is fully aware they have come into our lives and His purpose is to incite, to create, to propel his pure desire of redemption.

These are the very opportunities that give the Holy Spirit a chance to move some furniture.