Telling a story

I am storyboarding a video for the church I am working for this week. The video is about the value of MERCY and it takes a look at everything from hunger to loneliness to immigration.

While I have spent time in and out of the church office, I have been meeting some beautiful people and hearing their stories as well. There’s Chad who watched “Darfur Now” with me and grew up in Oregon. He is sincere and very bright. I love Heidi who, I learned today, is married to a full-blooded Navajo (isn't that cool?). She is capable and creative and has a ready smile. Jan, a woman who has God’s love coming out of her pores, sat and prayed with me as I began to work on the video. Her story of real loss and real life left me weeping. Mike, my much younger partner in crime, is the editor and a photographer extraordinaire. He has a way of seeing story through a lens in an incredible way.

All of these stories mix together to form the story of them – each life a chapter that forms a whole - and now I am a paragraph, too. Our time together has created more story, some of it very funny, some of it rather sad, some of it unsure – all the elements of a good story.

And though I sleep, eat and breathe the video right now, I suspect that what I will take home with me is the bigger story. God has a way of connecting people, of creating ties that bind, of writing people on each other's hearts. In a couple of more days, I will fly home. My plot will change and one character will be missing from their ongoing tale.

Still, they have given me so many new and beautiful words.