Why do we love great stories? Because they are pictures of the greatest story. There hasn’t ever been a story yet with people living happily ever after, since people die. But one story will come out that way. It’s a true story, and you and I are part of it.

Our Redeemer is our King, who took on death and hell, and defeated them. The first three chapters of God’s story, as told in the Bible, set up the unfolding drama of redemption. The last three chapters show how God will judge evil, reward good, and come down to the New Earth to live with His children forever. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more suffering and evil.

This is the greatest story ever told. Secular reviewers often say of a book, “This is a powerful redemptive story.” The very concept of a redemptive story flows from the Bible’s story of redemption. It’s the prototype of all great stories.

As a young Christian, I lost myself in the fiction of C. S. Lewis and J.R. R. Tolkien because they reflected a drama with eternal stakes. Though they were fiction, they were filled with far more truth than the world’s nonfiction. Tolkien and Lewis spoke of “true myth”, describing how the real epics of God’s creation and redemption are the substance that casts the shadows of the world’s myths. The myths are signposts pointing to truths far greater and truer than themselves.

People long for stories that give their lives meaning. You couldn’t make up a better story than the truth of God’s unfolding drama of redemption. You can’t find a greater hero than Jesus. The climax will be the return of the King and the establishing of His kingdom.

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