Power of Story

People don't act based on reality, they act based on the stories they believe about reality. If facts and numbers form the skeleton of our understanding of reality, stories are its flesh and blood. We become characters in the plots of the stories we believe in, often without being aware of it. In recent history, because of stories that Nazis told about Jews, and Tutsis told about Hutus, millions died. We hear stories everyday that shape our attitudes and determine our actions towards the poor, immigrants, gay people, people of other religions, and the list could go on.

I see the Bible as the Story of God, written by people imperfect as they were, who experienced a Reality that profoundly changed their understanding of the story in which they lived. The Story of God has often been over-simplified and interpreted into lists of rules meant to bring humanity into religious conformity. It sometimes gets reduced to a compilation of facts about reality which fail to inspire. The Bible is, however, mostly story. A story the reader is meant to enter into. A story we are meant to find ourselves in.

Judith M. Kunst in her book, The Burning Word, a read I highly recommend for its ability to draw the reader into God's story with playfulness, curiosity and imagination, has helped me experience God in a very real way within the pages of Scripture. With suggestions for personal practice The Burning Word invites the reader into a very engaging relationship with the God found in the pages of Scripture, a God to be wrestled with, reverenced, argued with and savored, just as the authors of the Bible themselves did. For me, it has reminded me of the fact that God continues to speak today just as God always has. The Story isn't finished, and just as the authors of the Bible wrote their parts of the Story, we are invited to write the next chapter with our communities.