Rats and Stories

I read a rather depressing book last year called Firmin, Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife. Reading it put me in one of those melancholy moods as I read about Firmin, a rat who's love for reading alienated him from his fellow rats and who's rodent appearance alienated him from the humans he had become enamored with. In the words of the author, Sam Savage, "Firmin is faced with what he can only regard as an utterly meaningless life". Firmin feels that through the books he reads, he can rescue himself from his meaningless rat life. He not only wants to read these books, he wants to be a part of them because he "is aware of the relation between a meaningful life and some sort of encompassing narrative". Thus his goal is "to become a character in a story". He recognizes that to live simply for himself, mindlessly eating the worn pages of books like his rat siblings, is to live a meaningless life. He wants to be a part of something larger, something bigger than just himself.

I think the reason that I enjoyed reading that book in spite of its melancholic mood, was that the desire to live a meaningful life is a desire all humans have. We want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves whether we realize it or not. That is the great thing about Christianity. It gives us meaning. It allows us to play a part in a story much greater than ourselves. I was reminded of this when a young girl sitting in the back row of my class asked me directly, "Why did Jesus die on the cross for us?" In that moment, I was not a teacher simply earning a paycheck. I was an agent of God's love and story to children who didn't know him. I was pointing these children beyond myself to a God that loves them so much that he sent his son to die on the cross to take away their sins.

I think that I have enjoyed the last year and a half so much here because at more than any other point in my life, it is clear to me that I am part of a bigger plan that God has. I can see the meaning God has for my life.

Here are two pictures from my class. The first are several students of mine. The second is an enormous birthday cake we had for one of the boy's classroom. It was so wide they had to carry it in at an angle to fit it through the door of the classroom.