Tell Me A Story
When my children were little, they loved tuck-in time, and snuggled deeply into the covers, turning their faces toward me. “Tell me a story about when I was little,” they said. Not overlooking the fact that they were still little, my brain scrambled for anecdotes that showed their valor, or creativity, or kindness, or humor.
“Tell me about you,” people ask. What do you say? It’s such an open-ended question, and perhaps even a cop-out question. What on earth do they want to know? Why they should like you, or pay attention to you, or be your friend? You might think, “Ask a more direct question that shows you have thought about me, and context, or that demonstrates actual interest.”
Or maybe the, “Tell me about you” question invites us to carry about with us those plot points in our storyline that demonstrate what is most important about us, or the most significant milestones.
The turning points of our journey, the elements of our daily life that speak the most profoundly about us. It requires thought: self-assessment, and perhaps faith-assessment, a wrestling with where we have seen God’s presence.
Answering those sorts of questions requires time and thought, then. At Celebrate 2018, we’ll be telling stories about the heroes of our faith, our relatives in the Scriptures who’d never heard of God before and yet dared to follow this God into exploits and adventures that revealed their worst selves—and God’s very best.
The sheer humanness of these heroes surprises me—their failings, their inappropriate conduct, the places of disbelief—and the colossal faith needed for their journeys. Those failings are woven into the Scriptures, too, and the struggle-stories inspire me the most. Because in spite of those difficult places, they followed after God. And in spite of those throw-mama-under-the-bus moments, these people achieved great momentum in establishing God’s work on earth.
I’m beyond excited to see you at Celebrate, and hug your neck as they say in the South. And I may just say to you, “Tell me about you.” What you love, what intrigues you; how you fill your days, what occupies your thoughts, what you long for, where have you missed God, where have you found God, what have you learned in your journey toward today?
Because the stories remind us not just of who we are. They remind us of who God is.
And that’s the real story. That we are so deeply loved, God has come to earth for us.
