So Mad Libs has been around since the 50s and yet somehow I missed them completely. I'm sure there was some form of an "insert word here" story that I did in school but I don't ever remember having one of these little newspaper booklets to myself. I sat down in a old brown chair, all comfy in my sweats with the sound of light rain in the background. Hours of contemplating the woes of the world for a class and the daily strain of life had left my minding wanting MUSH for dinner. A brain-break was certainly in order. Realizing this I had thought of the Mad Lib booklet a dear friend had gotten me for my birthday. "Perfect!" was what I assumed. Little did I know, I would realize a great spiritual insight that I'll thinly try to explain here...
Most of us American Christian, myself certainly included, live out our life as if we were filling in the blanks of a Mad Lib story. You see God does have a plan for our lives, just as the essence of the Mad Lib story has already been written before you read it. However, in our lives God has also given us the gift of free will (i.e. the blanks; following me here?) Granted this is a loose metaphor so bare with me...
What's interesting is that we fill in our blanks (literal or otherwise) with choices, desires, and options we think will work. We choose both options we think will be exciting and options we really don't care about any longer because it's the end of the story and we're simply "over it". Sometimes our blanks ask for nouns: material possessions we don't need and people who just don't make any sense. Other times we're asked for a noun: activities we shouldn't have done and actions that again, don't make any sense.
Even though we might not have total control over the whole story we can still direct it. If careful attention is made in each choice I could give a funny, scary, meaningful, crazy or bland theme to my Mad Lib. The beauty is, we make all of these decisions truly unaware of the structure to come and sometimes the result is a pleasant surprise. The twists up and down and corkscrews of life are exciting to say the least. I take comfort in joy in the fact that my story is not governed by Leonard Stern and Roger Price (Mad Lib inventors) but by the Creator of the Universe and my personal Maker.
Just something I've been ___(insert verb here)___ on... :)
