This is also the time of year that my mother moved to paradise, about 22 years ago.

Those two realities are related, in my mind. When I left my home in 1971 to begin living in NW Ontario, my mother had concerns for my safety. Where our family lived, freeze-up wasn’t a season. It was an occasional event that didn’t often produce enough ice to skate on the farm pond. So Mom’s repeated warning (for the rest of her life) was, “You’ll be careful on the ice, won’t you?” And my response was in the vein of, “Yes, Mom. I’m not stupid.”

So, by October of 1973 I had been happily married to Rita for three months, living in a small cabin at Poplar Hill First Nation. I was the veteran of two freeze-up events. That year the ice froze smooth and clear of snow, and it wasn’t long before it reached a thickness of four inches near the shore. It seemed good to me to take a snow machine and go explore the newly-frozen lake. I didn’t bother telling anyone. I was smart enough to take a ten-foot pole with me. I had learned a lot about caution and such.

I was cruising along near the center of the large lake when I felt the back of the snow machine drop a bit and return to normal. I looked back and saw what looked like a very small patch of open water. What? That wasn’t there a minute ago. I’d better check it out. I got off my machine with the pole, and approached the spot. From a little distance, I poked the pole into a hole in the ice. Sure enough, it was a real hole. All the way through. With that question answered, I got back on the machine and went back to shore.

Even as I write that paragraph, I get chills thinking about how different that day might have been. No one else in the village was out on the ice yet. And I had proved conventional wisdom to be wrong—through stupidity. Well, maybe it was just ignorance.

I don’t know if my mom gets any internet time in paradise. If she does, she may learn about this story for the first time. You can be sure I never told her.

Some of us are inclined to test all conventional beliefs or assumption about life and reality. I’ve always been that way. That’s not all bad. We’re on safe ice when we challenge time-honoured beliefs in a growing spirit of wisdom–genuinely seeking to know. It’s entirely another thing when we are simply determined to prove others wrong, or are selectively ignorant. That’s like standing on thin ice and poking at holes.

There’s an old proverb that is repeated four times in the Bible: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

It’s not hard for us to see that a healthy fear of danger is critical to our survival. The same healthy fear of danger is essential when we consider accepting or rejecting God’s version of truth and reality. Are you on a path of increasing wisdom? Or are you just having fun trying to prove others wrong?

I am still recovering from a pretty serious head injury, nearly six weeks ago. I fell flat on my back, off a ladder and onto a concrete floor. I didn’t suffer any spinal injury. I did break my skull in 3 places, and bruised the little brain inside. One friend said, “The angels must have put padding under your back before you hit the floor.” I said, “But they missed getting it there in time for my head.”

For years, I’ve had an answer for other people’s experiences in this category. Actually, I still tell myself the same answer. Because that answer seems to fit when I consider the stories of real people recorded in the Bible; and it seems to fit in real life, now.

Without experiences, we have no story. Without story, we only have a religion.

When God (or whatever coincidence or smarts we imagine) spares us completely from an injury or casualty we don’t even realize, we have no story. We haven’t learned anything.

On the other hand, every experience is the beginning of a story. And painful experiences seem to write the most profound stories.

My lightweight story of pain seems nothing in comparison to what others have experienced–from the suffering of believers in the Church around the world, or the losses that some of my close friends have felt through sickness and death. There have been times I have literally envied the evidence of a more passionate love for Jesus that came directly from a story of severe suffering. Of course, I quickly came back to my senses.

However, we don’t decide what elements go into our own stories. We only choose what our story means, in the ultimate scheme; we choose how it shapes our view of life, of the purpose of life, of the essence of our life in Christ.

The powerful stories of people, both in Scriptures and in the world we experience, prove to me that God grows people in astounding ways through their story—a story that always includes unexpected pain.

Through life-changing experiences, we have a story. With a faith-based interpretation of story, we can joyfully grow toward the ultimate prize—a life of full partnership with Jesus.