I am a great lover of biographies. I try to read the lives of the good and the great in a number of fields and walks of life. I'm currently reading the life of Winston Churchill and the incredible role that he played in the monumental conflicts of World War II. A few days ago, I was reading a short biography of the former UN Secretary General, Dag Hammerskjold. As I reflected on some of the quotations from his own diaries, Markings, I thought how easy it is for me, or for anyone, to hide behind the stories of other people. Because I can easily recount the heroic moral and spiritual exploits of others, I somehow justify the fact that much of the time the story of my own life may not be very heroic or spiritually inspiring.

Perhaps that's why our society is so consumed with "celebrity" or hero worship in its various forms. Maybe this is why the phenomenon of "reality TV" has reached such unimaginable heights (or perhaps "depths" would be more accurate). People tend to live their lives through others. They watch movies, reality shows, celebrity lives, and they don't have to face the fact that the story of their own lives isn't really saying much. Unfortunately this can be true for Christians as much as it can be for others. We have to admit that the cult of celebrity has infiltrated Christianity as much as it has other areas of society.

As I sat thinking about Dag Hammerskjold and the impact that one life story can have on those around it, I felt convicted that I have often avoided the story that God wants to write with my own life. Maybe the story was going to involve risks, or sacrifice, or steps into the unknown, and I simply wasn't ready... or willing. Maybe you can say the same about your own story.

The truth is we're all called to allow God to write a story with our lives. It may not necessarily be on the level of a Winston Churchill or David Livingstone or Dag Hammerskjold, but God wants to write a story that, when read, will bring glory to him. The story we allow him to write will be seen primarily through the relationships we develop and the people that we allow to impact our personal world.

The apostle Paul could say to the Corinthian Christians, "You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts" (2 Corinthians 3:2-3). What a challenging comment!

The world around us is looking for good news. Christians carry within them the Spirit of the living God who is constantly writing his glorious eternal story of life and hope. What story are you allowing him to write with your life?