STORIES

Mark 12:1a

“Then Jesus began teaching them with stories …”

What a lovely verse to me!  Jesus taught with stories.  Stories are the stuff of our lives.  Stories are written on our faces; they meander through our minds, connecting this fact with that fact, helping us to make sense of the human experience.  Just take a minute to really think what human existence would be without stories!

Stories anchor us to each other.  From the first man and woman created to the last person to be brought into this old world, we are connected by our stories.  Most conversations, no, virtually all conversations ever spoken between humans are stories.

Without stories, we would never learn anything.  Even in a dry (to me, anyway!) subject like math, there are “story problems”!  How would we teach our children the ABC’s without a story?  How could music be written without a story?  How could birth, marriage, death be celebrated without our stories?  And why would God make us with such creativity and imagination if there were no avenue to share that-stories!  Without stories, life on planet earth would have no explanation, no meaning, and communication between people may as well be binary in nature.

Jesus teaches us with stories.  He knows us, doesn’t He?  He knows we will remember the “punch line” of a story.  The spiritual lessons taught by story-telling are remembered long after the details of the story fade away into the recesses of our minds. 

So I love that “Jesus began teaching them with stories”.  And HIStory will continue for eternity-another lovely thought!

Father, thank You for stories!  Amen.