| I helped my friend Thomas move a few weeks back. I decided to wear my bucket hat. I got it this summer as a gift, and I’ve loved it since the summer day in June that I opened it. You know when you get a gift from someone that they put thought into, and that person knows you well? And you love the gift that much more because you love the person who got it for you? That is my bucket hat. I’m beaming with extra pop in my step as I grab my fishing rod off the wall and head down to fish at the river after a long day at work. The late day sun bounces off my face and I soak in the warmth. It’s too late to get sunburned. There’s no real application to wearing my bucket hat this late in the day, except for the fact that I love it and who it is from. We moved his entire life out of his old place and into his brand-new house, where him and his family would be the first people to ever live there. When we were talking after we had finished moving him in, he made a comment about my bucket hat, saying he really liked it. I told him I did too. Then, I chuckled about the orange T on the middle of it, representing the University of Tennessee. We’re not really good at anything sports related so I tend to make fun of us in that aspect, it’s the easiest way to cope. Thomas persisted though, talking about how special it was to be able to represent something like that. To have graduated, to have built those relationships, to have sweat and fought hard for something and to have finished the race. It was part of my “origin story”, he told me. And he’s right. I’m proud of it, the orange T and all. I’m proud of the time I spent there and the relationships I have now because of my time there. I would not even have my bucket hat if I didn’t go to Tennessee, because I would never have met the special person who gave it to me. God sees these things. He knows them long before we do. He can see our whole lives laid out before us. Who we will meet, where we will go, what we will do. And he wants to be a part of all of it. He knew I would meet that person and he knew that in the summer of 2019 I’d be fishing in my new bucket hat, with joy in my heart and soul. This sounds simple, but it’s deep and meaningful to me when I stop the constant forward momentum of life and just take a moment to soak in what is. When I think about the beautiful origins and how they have transpired into the stories God is bringing to life with me in them, I can’t help but be struck by how special our origin stories are. I got to be a part of the origin of Thomas’s new home that day. The home where he will raise his daughter and newborn son. One day we’ll look back on that move together, the same way I looked back on what my bucket hat means to me – and we’ll say, that was the origin of something good. I think about the ultimate origin story, Jesus coming to Earth, the son of God as a human. Out of the womb of a virgin as a baby. Vulnerable and small. With King Harrod searching the land to slay him. From those early days as a baby to growing into a teenager, performing miracles, building relationships over food and drinks like all the best ones are built, to wearing a crown of thorns for us. Most of us think of Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross as the most meaningful part of his life because he bought our freedom through it, but it’s the sheer fact that he was human that made that sacrifice what it was. God knew Jesus had to be human, fully human like us. He knew he had to have an origin story like we all do, so he gave him one. Now, there’s not a single person that Jesus can’t relate to, because his origin is ours. I love what God did there. I want to take more moments to celebrate the present, to celebrate the origin of where I am. Before a sound is ever made. There in the quiet, unbeknownst to the world, something special is beginning. The same way God started the story of the Earth. With no spectators, no critics, no applause or acclaim. Just God. And the origin of what he knew he was doing – crafting the greatest story of all time. The story of us with him. |