Textbook

Yesterday marked the formal end of a chapter in my life.  In an instant history moment I saw a textbook case study unfold before me and I was playing a lead character!  I know I “knew” this before but did I really know how the story was going to unfold.  Bluntly, if I didn’t I should have, if I did the scene was still obvious.
 
Go into any major bookstore and you will find volumes on how organizations react to change, people to change and success, and what can happen when people feel threatened.  Each scenario played out in one form or another, good and bad.  Perhaps knowing what could, would, and did come wasn’t helpful.  One knew it was going to be painful, unfair, and full of irony.  As a way of avoiding, mitigating, or preparing, the natural move was to ignore and work even harder to achieve the goal at hand.  The fact that our efforts never changed the inevitable outcome was yet another thread following the themes in the studies.
 
Everything played out in the end.  We had more than our share of victims and few heroes.  Yet the vision of what we started out to do has moved into a maturing infancy, even if few of the parents are still around to see and experience the joys.
 
Much of history has been a fulfillment of one prediction or another.  Even in Jesus’ death one writer notes that many “things that happened confirmed the Scripture, ‘Not a bone in his body was broken,’ and the other Scripture that reads, ‘They will stare at the one they pierced.’” (John 19.36, 37) 
 
You and I have the opportunity to write a story today.  The script is open, yet we are merely part of a story that has gone on and will continue.  The question unknown is which story will we join?  Will we be a part of the community of love, compassion, and mercy?  Will our steps tell a story of greed, exploitation, and attempts at justice?  We have the real power, it’s our textbook.