“Tell me a story.” How many times has a child, grandchild, niece, nephew, etc. pleaded with you to do this? North Carolina’s storyteller laureate, Donald Davis, reminds us that: “in a story I could safely dream any dream, hope any hope, go anywhere I pleased any time I pleased, fight any foe, win or lose, live or die. My stories created a safe experimental learning place.”
Doctor Luke was a word-painter; a storyteller extraordinaire. His word pictures are the ones we seem to turn to most often in this season of watching and waiting. And before he told the story, he made sure his hearers knew of his love for the One whose life, death, and resurrection was changing his own life and the whole world. For Luke, the story of Jesus was a personal witness.
1 So many others have tried their hand at putting together a story of the wonderful harvest of Scripture and history that took place among us, 2 using reports handed down by the original eyewitnesses who served this Word with their very lives.”(Luke 1:1-2 The Message)
Flannery O’Connor once said, “A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell them is to read the story.”
As Barbara Brown Taylor reminds us:
If you are a lover of stories, then you know this is true. A good story does not just tell you about something that happened once upon a time. It brings that time back to life so that you can walk around in it and experience it for yourself….. That is the power of the word, and when the word concerns Jesus, that power becomes God’s power.
The good news this Advent/Christmas is that God has made room in the story for each of us too. The life-changing story of Jesus continues to be fleshed out in each of us. This begs the question:
With whom will I share this good news of Jesus?
Still In ONE Peace,
Jon (the Methodist)