Storytime

I'm still thinking quite a bit about stories. I don't just mean fairy tales, and I don't just mean fiction in general. I'm talking about all of them, for every story can teach us something worthwhile, fiction or nonfiction. A kerfuffle once arose between me and a woman I know over the purpose of stories. I maintain they aren't designed to teach morality, per se, but they are designed to teach us how to be human. Odds are the book you consider to be the worst you've ever read earned that ignominious distinction because it utterly failed to connect to you on a human level (and the writing was probably pretty bad, too). What it said didn't matter to your soul. All the best stories make that connection.

Maybe that's why God reveals Himself to us primarily through stories. The Bible is the greatest book ever written because it contains stories inspired directly by God. They're true stories about real people -- and their humanity is always on full display. They win, they lose, they remember, they forget, they bless, they curse -- in short, they live. And at the center of all their stories -- at the very apex and climax of human history -- stands what has long been called The Greatest Story Ever Told: the story of the Son of God, the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

We know the life of Jesus through the stories recorded for us in the pages of Scripture, but we know Jesus himself through his entrance into our own stories. Jesus inserts himself into the biographies of every human being and asks to become the one who changes the story forever after. No life story can be the same after meeting a living God. Jesus offers us all the ultimate happy ending, too: eternity in paradise.

How will your story end? Will it feature a commitment to the Savior who died for you?