Stories

There is nothing more powerful than a story. If I’ve learned anything from the Bible, it is not only that God is up to something redemptive in creation and recreation, it is also that each of us are a part of that bigger story. The best preaching I hear is preaching that helps me see how my story is a part of God’s story. The best reading is the reading of stories that connect my story to God’s story. The same can be said of music, art and so on.

Not everything worth reading and not all music, etc., is overtly Christian. Yet, all truth is God’s truth. Every discovery of truth is a discovery of the greater Truth. I’ve never seen a conflict between faith and science; they are just two parallel roads leading to the same destination.

Nature, God’s physical creation, helps us see ourselves as part of the grander scheme of God’s story. I’ll never forget the first time I stood on the open midnight prairie of northern New Mexico and found myself awestruck by the stars where no artificial light interfered. I was all alone and no one was singing or preaching or teaching a Bible study but it was, indeed, one of the most spiritual moments I’ve ever had.

In every human story, if we will listen, we can hear something of the voice of God. Even in the greatest of all tragedies, God’s voice is never completely silenced. Indeed, there is solid evidence that suffering helps quell the artificial light of temporary sensory experience so that the stars of God’s eternity are able to shine through all the more, thereby giving us hope beyond the moment in which we are living.

For the next while in my blog, I want to just tell stories. In particular, I’m going to repeat stories that have been encouraging to me over the years, helping me find God and stay meaningfully connected to God’s purpose. If you’ve ever read my preaching, you may notice some of these stories as reruns. That’s because these are the stories that I find myself repeating over and over again in conversation.

That’s one of the main ways we came to have our Bible. People kept telling the old, old story until someone decided it might be a good idea to write it all down. It was such a big story it took centuries to get it done. I’m convinced that God is still revealing and is still writing the story. Maybe in ways we can’t imagine, God is letting us be one of the authors of one or two lines of the story that someone will read generations from now.

I hope you enjoy these stories, and find encouragement and hope in them as well.