Good Fiction

Mary Lynn and I went walking this afternoon, and somewhere in the conversation I made a profound, speculative leap--assuming I knew what someone might be thinking or doing about a situation. Mary Lynn caught me at it, and I had to admit to her that I had no idea why I needed to think what I was thinking, but that I thought it was a perfectly good fictional story!

Oftentimes, we anticipate, fear, savor the thought of, wince at, hope for--many, many thing or events which are not real, and which may not ever occur as we imagine them. A Christian's challenge is to stay in the moment, in the reality that is here, and to ask how God would want this moment to be lived. There is far less in Scripture that counsels us to worry about, or generate fictional stories about, another person's motives or actions, than there is on carefully observing and understanding our own. Jesus said, "Why are you fretting about the splinter in your neighbor's eye, when you yourself are walking around with a great log in your own?" Which of the two see things more clearly under those circumstances, you or the neighbor?

Anyway, some fictions make the best-seller lists, but many of our fictitious tales deserve to be forgotten as soon as they hit the cerebral cortex.