Josiah Royce said, “If I have never been fascinated in childhood by my heroes and the wonders of life, it is harder to fascinate me later with the call of duty.”
An unknown author wrote: At their best, stories are incredibly persuasive because they ‘speak to us’ at a very meaningful, emotional, and often-unconscious level. When a story makes the hair on the back of our necks tingle it is because that particular story has touched a very deep nerve in our personal or collective psyches.
When we reflect on our pre-teen years, most of us can remember "story" as a big part of those years. We grew up listening to stories. But something happens as we get older. We hear stories in our adult years but we don't connect with them or reflect on them as intimately as we did as children. But, I’m convinced that we need an interaction with faith stories in our adult years as much if not more than we need them in our childhood years.
Can you remember the last time you stood at the precipice of “This is it! No more!” and thought about laying your faith down or at least taking a nice long vacation from discipleship?
Hebrews was written to second generation Christians. They were distracted and weary. Living the Christian life was hard. You add attrition in the house churches to the daily grind and pressure they felt as persons of faith and you have a recipe for faith deterioration. There is theology aplenty in the book of Hebrews. But, the writer knows the power of story. Story is what discipleship looks like in someone else’s life.
Hebrews was written to second generation Christians. They were distracted and weary. Living the Christian life was hard. You add attrition in the house churches to the daily grind and pressure they felt as persons of faith and you have a recipe for faith deterioration. There is theology aplenty in the book of Hebrews. But, the writer knows the power of story. Story is what discipleship looks like in someone else’s life.
11:1 says, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for; the conviction of things not seen.” Heard it before…right? So had they. But, truth has a way of going in one ear and out the other. What gives it traction in our lives? Stories! Chapter eleven is one story after another of people in real life situations living out their faith. Like a base drum setting the beat for a marching band, the refrain “by faith” sets the rhythm of the chapter. This list of regular folks – just like the readers! – did extraordinary things. They built, left, received, looked to the future, broke the grip of this world and its seductions from their lives, anticipated God’s blessings in the future, endured, lived without fear, worshipped, and kept walking when they couldn’t see past their nose. They died trusting God.
We need stories, too. Biblical ones. Modern ones. We need them because faith as an ideology can become brittle. We know how susceptible we are to a loss of perspective with a bible lying three feet from us! We gradually become sealed off in our own world. Faith becomes a word with no bearing. We know we should get up after a spiritual defeat but we don't know how to. Shame defines us. Discipleship becomes an impossible proposition. Then we hear a story about someone who is serving in a similar or perhaps, more difficult situation. In that moment a bridge is built between calling and discipleship. The Spirit stirs our heart and awakens our resolve to serve another day.
How’s your faith right now? I thought about someone last week who went through a particularly difficult time in their life. My remembrance of their story encouraged and challenged my own faith. I knew what to do. I had the teaching in my back pocket. But it was their story that brought it to life and put the wind in my sails. How does “story” work in your life? Perhaps that person is in Hebrews 11. Perhaps they are in your family or your congregation or stuck in the recesses of your memory. But, they are there. Hearing the beat of the base drum in their life helps us catch the cadence of faih in our own life.
Father, awaken our memories with stories of faith. Bring them to our minds when we are down and out; when we can feel evil breathing down our necks; when we can see what to do but don’t have the strength to do. Give us stories of faith in such moments that we might continue to write a story of faith in our own lives that others can draw from one day. Thank you for Jesus who provides us with the ultimate story. Amen.
Randy Daugherty
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