And the story continues…

Each week I get to live my childhood over again - climbing in the van, driving home from church with three young children, and listening to them recount the stories they learned from the Bible that morning. I remember the time in my life when I still found wonder and excitement in the stories of Moses & the plagues, David & Goliath, or Jesus walking on water. Nowadays? I barely flinch reading these passages (many probably for the hundredth, or event thousandth time or more), and I’d probably feel cheated in a way if our pastor decided to teach on such common narratives.

I was raised, in many ways, to see beyond the stories of Scripture. I know them all by heart, but I’ve also been taught the underlying truths and hidden lessons in each of them. Sure it was cool that Jesus fed the 5000, but what He was really trying to teach you and I was that we need to depend on Him in our lives. Walking on water? Don’t take your eyes of Jesus or you’ll begin to ‘sink’ away from Him in your life.

MORE THAN A MANUAL While each of these ‘lessons’ I’m sure are accurate and are things that we would do well to follow, the problem is that by de-storifying (yeah, I made that up) God’s Word we have taken what has been given to us as a Grand Storybook and reduced it to a step-by-step ‘Owners Manual for Life.’ Why’s that a problem? Because we lose a great truth - and one which resonates in the lives of young adults - in the process.