Two Stories to Live By

I have two stories that I have enjoyed reading about one person.

1. The Castle of God’s Love

Many truths about God are too big for our minds to hold. We can know some of the truth and it shines in our hands like star bright jewels. But there is always more. We can know a little about God’s love, but we could never begin to reach our thoughts around something so mighty.

Try to think of it like this… Imagine God’s love is a huge castle, soaring higher than a thousand white peaked mountains linked together with their tops poking into space. Imagine looking into this castle from far away: Vast and high, gleaming like morning sun on new snow. Its towers reach up and up. The castle is so great it would take a lifetime just to walk around it. There is so much to see and taste and know. Its gardens are bigger than this whole state and spill over with towering trees and flowering trees and leaping fountains and majestic waterfalls and a rainbow of singing birds. Its rooms are filled up with wondrous treasure and music and laughter and mysteries and places where you can explore, play, hide and rest. And it also probably has an 18-hole golf course that is better than Augusta National!!

No one has seen all its rooms and towers.
No one has peered through its high windows.
No one has eaten in all of its long sunny banquet halls.

Can you know all of it? NO. Not in this world. Not even in a trillion years in Heaven. But, you can find a very special room in that castle. A room that you will love very much. And you can get to know that room, and at the end of the day curl up in a big soft chair and fall asleep. Every bit of that castle belongs to you and me, but we can only understand just so much at a time. But we have the rest of our lives here on earth and an endless life in Heaven to keep learning and seeing and hearing more and more. This is The Castle of God’s Love

2. One Solitary Life

He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in still another village, where he worked in a carpenter shop until he was 30. Then for three years he was an itinerant preacher.

 He never wrote a book
 He never had a family or owned a house
 He never travelled more than 200 miles from the place he was born
 He did none of the things that a person usually associates with greatness
 He had no credentials but himself
 He never had an office
 He didn’t go to university

He was only 33 when public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. He was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves.

When he was dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing, the only property he had on earth. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Twenty centuries have come and gone and today he is the central figure of the human race.

All the armies that ever marched, all the ships that have ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the monarchs who have ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of people on earth as much as that One Solitary Life.

Wherever your future leads you, I will be watching and cheering for you. Thank you for all that you have taught me in my time here. If I can inspire others half as much as you have inspired me, I know I will have been successful.

Find that Castle and explore it: Remember the one solitary life that was lived for you.