My real history

when we repeat the words, "I believe," which introduce the Creed, we affirm our participation in that history and we confess that we are figures drawn into involvement in that history. The history of Jesus Christ, precisely, that is my history! It is closer to me than the various events of my own life.

(p. 83, Karl Barth, The Faith of the Church)

Bruce Waltke had something similar to say as he embarks on a lecture series on Judges:

To a large extent your definition of yourself is your memory ... history is memory. It is our memory. Every sociological community has both a memory and a destiny for its own self-identification. Now there is something more important than your memory, and that is your spiritual commitment.... You and I have made a spiritual commitment to Jesus Christ. This memory of the Old Testament, is his memory. It shaped him. And when we were baptised into Christ we became Abraham's seed, and this whole history is our history. So this is your history you are going to be learning. It is skeletons in the closet for the most part; but it is a tremendous testimony to God's grace. And I am suggesting therefore to you that as a result of this course, and through this gift of memory, you will know yourself better as a Christian

(MP3 lecture, A01, Course Introduction, Light from the Dark Ages: An Exposition on Judges and Ruth)

Karl Barth points us to where we can have hope. If we look at ourselves and our own lives we often see little to be hopeful about. Death appears the end, and a justified end of a short brutish life. But if Jesus' history is ours then his resurrection and justification is ours too.

But even then you may have a nagging doubt. I may identify with Jesus, but if Jesus doesn't identify with me then the union on which all our hope rests breaks down. However, when Jesus makes Israel's history his own, and identifies with the representatives of humanity who again and again went away from him and 'did what was right in [their] own eyes' (Judges 17:6; 21:25), then our hope is a certain one.