Prologue

Picking Up the Thread

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith,

we have peace with God through our LordJesus Christ.

Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand,

and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings,

knowing that suffering produces endurance,

and endurance produces character,

and character produces hope,

and hope does not put us to shame,

because God’s love has been poured into our hearts

through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Romans 5:1–5

A central claim ofWhen the Stars Disappear: Help and Hope from Stories of Suffering in Scripture, the first volume in this series, is that we understand our lives as stories. Stories help us orient ourselves in life by placing us somewhere on a trajectory that has a beginning, middle, and end. Moreover, we need two different kinds of stories to give our lives their full meaning: a particular (or personal) story and a general one. The particular story is about what our individual lives mean. Each of us needs to be able to tell a story that orients us to the particular people, places, and things around us, describing where we have come from, where we are, and where we think we can go so that we can project ourselves into hopeful futures where we can get what we want and need. The general story answers questions about what human life as such means. For instance, are we just chance products of blind, meaningless cosmic forces, or have we been created by God to fulfill some specific purpose? Is human life about nothing but making money and pursuing our own personal happiness, or is it about believing and obeying God and caring for others? Metaphorically, these two kinds of stories set the stars that must guide us in place, enabling us to navigate life’s otherwise uncharted seas. These “stars” are the deep and firm convictions we rely on to tell us who we are and what sort of world we live in. They include c