Have you ever thought about the ‘power of story’?

‘Story’ is how the ancients have communicated throughout history. Good and bad, right and wrong, and everything in between ‘recorded’ by ‘story.’

It seems to me that the power of story is being lost, cheapened, if you will, by the instant communications we have today. Depth is lost because we don’t have the time to go deep. Richness is lost because we only want the scintillation of the moment, moving so quickly to the next one we miss the real point of the current one.

Our Bible is, after all, a story. Plot lines and characters and everything else you can imagine are in God’s story book for us. In fact, this story has a bunch of stuff you CAN’T imagine, which makes the mystery and the intrigue and the wonder of it all so amazing as it all unfolds for us, right there on the pages! Our minds can’t help but ‘go there,’ when we read God’s story.

Take a minute right now and try to comprehend the story of our creation as told to us in Genesis. So many questions pop up. Who made us? How were we made? When were we made? Why were we made? Is the story really real, or just a human made delusion of the ancients? Was there a real Garden of Eden? Who was the serpent, if he wasn’t a snake? Was he just a snake? Was it really an apple they ate? Who else was in the Garden? Was anyone watching it all? Who? How many were watching? Where did they come from? What’s the point of this story?

Talk about a serial-made-for-life, or a made-for-life-serial. Either way, this one is fantastic from the get-go, and best followed from the beginning, although you can pick it up in any episode and it’s still fantastic. You don’t need a DVR because you have a Bible and can re-visit any part of the show at any time you wish. It would be nice if we could switch on the closed-captions and get a running commentary of what was unfolding, because we can’t quite keep up. Know what I mean?

You see, from one perspective this Bible is the Story of God, and from another view it is the story of man and his, man’s, response to what God is up to. Isn’t it amazing that this God Story, the one He wrote since He is the Creator, is so analyzed and argued by man, the creation? Even though we have Romans 1 to tell us this fact, that things are backwards in our thinking, we continue running along…..backwards. (laugh here)

Why is it that a really good story, one like A Few Good Men from modern times, or Tom Sawyer from a bit earlier, can be watched or read, over and over, with excitement and joy and even learning of some kind each time, and yet God’s Story, the Bible, sits on the shelf of so many homes? Put on the DVD of Hunt For Red October, or Jason Bourne, or even Sense And Sensibilities and I can watch for hours, again, even though I know the lines!!!

Is it because we don’t really think about what we are reading when we read the Bible? Perhaps we don’t really believe it. Perhaps we say to ourselves “Oh yeah, I know that one….” and move along without sincerely pondering what we just read. Perhaps it’s because what we just read in the Bible is so fantastic, so amazing, so almost other-worldly that we can’t process it!

Some of us have the habit of going to the end of a book and trying to see if we want to invest the time in getting there. Is it worth it? Let’s just read the Summary, if you will, and decide from that if the details merit further reading. Ok, news flash! At the end of The Book, God restores His Creation, re-creating what He wanted at the beginning, defeating all His enemies, placing His creation, man, with Him in Glory. The reader is left with a pretty simple question: “Will I be there?”

The answer to that one is, thankfully, in the pages prior, starting with Genesis… Go for it! It’s a fantastic read.