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“What if all the great stories that have ever moved you, brought you joy or tears–what if they are telling you something about the true Story into which you were born, the Epic into which you have been cast?”
Epic by John Eldredge, page 15
Continuing my What I’m Reading series, today I want to talk about one of my all-time favorites. There are few books on my shelf I’ve reread as many times as Epic by John Eldredge. I first read it in high school, and it has become one of the books I most love to recommend and give away. (Luckily, it’s super cheap on Amazon! You can stock up and pass them out like candy!) This small book feels like a tiny treasure, the secret story of the universe wrapped in poetry and movie references. It has captured my imagination and given me a framework for life, theology, and Story in so many ways.
The premise of Epic is two-fold: 1) all of history is a Story told by God, a sweeping epic of eternal proportions, and 2) this Story is reflected and illuminated by the stories we love.
From the time before time, the eternal fellowship of the Trinity before creation, to the roller coaster of humanity’s fall and redemption, to the future restoration of all things, our great “happily ever after”–the gospel is a story, a sweeping epic of love, loss, war, sacrifice, betrayal, romance, homecoming, and adventure. The trouble is that most of us don’t realize “what sort of tale we’ve fallen into”, to borrow a phrase from Samwise Gamgee, as John Eldredge does. Epic says that for most of us, life feels like a movie we’ve arrived to 45 minutes late. We feel a bit lost and confused. We missed the opening exposition and never saw the trailer. What is happening and what kind of story should I expect?
We need to know the Story.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God has planted eternity in the human heart. He’s given us an instinctive sense of the story of the ages, longings that point to the truth, and it comes out in the books we write and the movies we film. The Story of the ages is retelling itself in our stories.
Epic draws on familiar imagery from some of the most beloved stories of our culture, from The Lord of the Rings to Titanic, to paint a vivid and living picture in the reader’s mind. I love this approach because it brings the emotions of the gospel to life, which may be dull in us due to overfamiliarity or total unfamiliarity. We may not always weep over the gospel or feel the surging longing for Kingdom adventure, but we sure do for our favorite movies!
After the prologue sets up this premise of Story, the rest of the chapters go through Act One, Act Two, etc of the gospel, beginning with the fellowship of the Trinity in the time before time…
the devastating betrayal of the fall of Lucifer…
the breathtaking dawn of creation…
the war for the human soul and the victory of redemption…
and the future, final restoration of all things, our great and glorious “happily ever after” for all eternity.
This is the sort of tale we’ve fallen into, an Epic more brilliant and breathtaking than the greatest our imaginations have ever produced.
I can’t recommend Epic enough. It’s always super cheap on Amazon and about 100 pages… really, you have no excuse NOT to read this book!
