Granny Weatherwax of Dicsworld fame once said that you have to give people a “story”. It isn’t enough to tell them the “truth” as so – you have to give them a story that relates to their particular situation.
For example, in order to help a lazy man over come his ailments – Granny tells him to talk a daily walk to the local mountain spring and throw in two rocks for the water sprits. After a month of this, he would be better – as least that’s how the story goes.
The truth being that the spring is five miles away and it would be the daily exercise and fresh air that would heal him, not the water sprits.
I was at the coffee shop the other day reading a book about contemporary issues and trends in world missions. One of the comments the authors put forward for the church is for Believers to tell a story.
Stories tell us about the hand of God in everything lives; everyday things. God’s book is a collection of stories – stories about Him, not people. [@more@]
Over the last few weeks, our church has been going through a series on the Kingdom of God. It's a tad funny in that everything I or the pastor gets up to preach, we usually end up telling the Grand Story instead of performing an exegesis the passage.
A few weeks back on the way home from Colorado Springs, I saw a short DVD about a buy who was going around telling the full Story from start to finish. It seems that folks know the stories about Noah, Samson, David, Jesus and Paul – but they don’t know how they fit together.
Then there was the time I was visiting a friend in jail. As he was sharing his struggles and trails, I found myself telling him a story about a believer of old.
Funny things, stories are. They have a way of showing up.
I’ve been reading my kid’s story bible to them for bed time stories and it has helped quite a bit for putting Daniel, the three with fire, Esther, Ezra, King Nebuchadnezer, Darius, and many in that time period into perspective for me.