Epic (Prologue)

Introduction:

Frodo and Sam

“I wonder what sort of tale we’ve fallen into?” (1-2)

There is a story

“What sort of tale have I fallen into?” (2)

Life is a Story

Scene by scene (2)

“All of life is a story.” -Madeline L’Engle (3).

“What happened?” = “Tell me the story.”

The importance of context

Story is How We Figure Things Out

“… We as humans have this craving for meaning-for the rest of the story. We need to know what’s going on.” (4).

“Story is the language of the heart” (5).

“Stories nourish us.”

“Stories are equipment for living” -Robert McKee, Hollywood screenwriting teacher

We go to the movies “to ive in a fictional reality that illuminates our daily reality.”

“Stories shed light on our lives.”

“Our Stories tell us who we are, why we are here, and what we are to do. They give us our best answers to all of life’s big equestions, and to most of the small ones as well.” -Daniel Taylor (5-6)

Lingering questions

Who am I really?

Why am I here?

Where will I find life?

What does God want of me?

“I just wish I knew what I am supposed to do.” Neo, the Matrix Reloaded (7).

“Seeing our lives as stories is more than a powerful metaphot. It is how experience presents itself to us.” -Daniel Taylor (7).

We Have Lost Our Story

“For must of us, life feels like a movie we’ve arrived at forty-five minutes late.” (7).

“If there is meaning to this life, then why do our days seem so random?” (8)

“With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand.” -Chesterton (8-9).

The failure of modern science, uncertainty

“But that’s just the way I see it.”

What sort of tale have we fallen into?

There is a Larger Story

Large maps at amusement parks, malls, etc.

“We can discover the Story.”

Think about your favorite movies.

“The films you love are telling you something very important, something essential about your heart.” (12)

Why does every film basically follow the same storyline?

“Every story, great and small, shares the same essential structure because every story we tell borrows its power from a Larger Story, a Story woven into the fabric of our being-what pioneer psychologist Carl Jung tried to explain as archetype, or what his more recent popularizer Joseph Campbell called myth.” (12-13)

“There is a Story that we just can’t seem to escape. There is a Story written on the human heart.”

Ecclesiastes 3:11 NLT

11 Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.

Epic

“There is more to Christianity.”

“Christianity, in its true form, tells us that there is an Author and that he is good, the essence of all that is good and beautiful and true, for he is the source of all these things” (14).

“What if all the great stories that have ever moved you, brought you joy or tears-what if they are telling you something about the true Story into which you were born, the Epic into which you have been cast?” (15).

Read Frederick Buechner Quote