right now, in my life, God is teaching me a lot about the importance of story. the importance of other people's stories. the importance of my own story. the importance of God's story. people understand story. it's how we relate.
in high school, we would sit at the lunch table and just tell story after story after story. that's all we did. people learn who you are through the stories you tell and vice versa. however, i am now seeing a disconnect that i didn't understand then: it is a give and take relationship. we must be listening and connecting to other people's stories as well as telling our own. back then, (and even sometimes now) we would just wait for our turn to top the current story with a zinger of our own instead of listening and understanding.
we all know that jesus communicated with stories. how else would this world understand any of his messages? there would be no point of reference. he came with a message of a better way to live, and explained it in a way that people could relate to. he told stories.
acts 14:27 says, "When they had arriced and gathered the church together, they began to report all things that God had done with them and how He had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles." let me clarify: THEY TOLD STORIES. THEIR STORIES. OTHER PEOPLE'S STORIES.
development/change/transformation happens in the context of relationship. tell your story. listen [really listen] to someone else's story. it will change you. let it.
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4 comments:
I see two problems in life. You touched on one of them.
A - I only want to hear your story so that I can prove to you that my story is better ... thus confirming that I am a better person than you are. Yea me. (insert wild applause here)
B - My story keeps evolving and if I tell my story with a period at the end rather than a comma, I do us both a disservice. Still, etiquette and linguistic rules dictate that paragraphs (and thus, stories) must end with periods. And my desire to prove my worthiness dictates that I must tell my story to illustrate what I have learned (hopefully, from God) as though I have finished learning. As though I have "arrived." I haven't. I think that when we tell our latest "story" (aka: What God Did/What I Did For God) I must get comfortable with putting a coma at the end. Otherwise my story ... which is intended by God to lead to truth ... becomes a lie.
Does that make any sense?
Kellen, how is the wind?
I talked a lot about the idea of story when I preached through Esther. All in all our story is a part of a larger whole, the story of God. Every person is on one side or the other - either people who rebel or people who obey - there is a determined end of the story for each. Chew on that thought with one of those Chicago style pizzas!
I laughed when I saw it was about story... not cuz it was bad... it was actually rather good... I laughed and thought... Story? Welcome to Willow. Ha ha.
yeah. we tend to talk about story a lot. especially in this new 3D initiative thing we're doing. brian, you're the man.
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