By Max Lucado, Zondervan, 200 pages

Some of you live in such road-weary bodies: knees ache, eyes dim, skin sags. Others exited the womb on an uphill ride. While I have no easy answers for your struggle, I implore you to see your challenge in the scope of God’s story. View these days on earth as but the opening lines of his sweeping saga. Let’s stand with Paul on the promise of eternity.

How do we view the impediments of life that leap up when we least expect them? As best-selling Christian author Max Lucado writes in his newest book God’s Story, Your Story: When His Becomes Yours, nothing in God’s plan is accidental and all, ultimately, can be seen in light of his mercy and grace: “Puppet in the hands of fortune or fate?” Lucado asks. “Not you. You are in the hands of a living, loving God. Random collection of disconnected short stories? Far from it. Your life is a crafted narrative written by a good God, who is working toward your supreme good.” We are not pawns in a larger game of chance, Lucado argues, and we must learn to view our lives through a God-inspired lens rather than through a lens of worldly disappointment.

“As God’s story becomes yours, closed doors take on a new meaning,” Lucado writes. “You no longer see them as interruptions of your plan, but as indications of God’s plan.” And when we begin to believe that everything in our lives ultimately leads to a greater good, God’s story indeed begins to become our story. Peppered with New Testament tales that speak to Lucado’s thesis, God’s Story, Your Story is an uplifting look at how to rethink life’s disappointments.

Jennie A. Harrop