Heard a Good Story Lately?

I love a good story.  Always have.  In fact I don’t know anybody who doesn’t enjoy listening to a good story. Stories have a way of awakening our minds and stoking our imagination. As a story unfolds we naturally anticipate “what’s next”?

I think that partly explains why Jesus told stories. Scripture calls them parables. Jesus had a knack for taking slices of everyday life and serving them up as pictures of what kingdom living is all about. Someone once said to me, “I think about the parables as ‘talking in crayon’”.

Most teachers in Jesus’ day talked about faith in rather complicated terms. Spiritual conversations were mostly heavy and uninteresting. But, Jesus’ style was different. He used stories and imagery from everyday life that allowed his teaching to stoke the imagination and turn the heart toward a divine perspective of life.  He told stories about a farmer planting seed, fishermen and fishing nets, hidden treasure, weddings, and banquets, stewards operating large estates, lost coins, lost sheep and lost sons, trees struggling to bear fruit, and a guy fixated on building it bigger and better until the day he suddenly died. He drew on experiences, attitudes and events that everybody knew about. And, tucked away in every story was a punch line about the kingdom of God.

These simple stories were re-told by gospel writers for a reason. Who among us hasn’t been overwhelmed by life? We know how crazy life can get. We know about its seductions. We know the occasional struggle of trying to hum “this little light of mine” in a world that scoffs at faith and says, “live instinctually”. These stories bring strength and perspective disguised in simple plot lines.  Consider this:

• Has God thrown seed across your life? If so, what kind of ground are you? Am I? Is the seed still bearing fruit in us?
• Do we live oblivious to the fact that Jesus will return or do we, like the stewards who took care of the estate, carry on knowing the master could return any day?
• Do we respect our faith like the guy who found buried treasure in a field and sold everything to buy the field?
• Can we hear the Father’s invitation to come to His table or are we too busy with “our lives” to hear the most magnificent thing any person can hear – the call of God through the gospel of His Son?
• Would we hunt for a person like the lady who searched for a coin or a shepherd a lost sheep or a father his estranged son? And, do we know how to throw parties for people who have come back from the spiritual dead?

Point? We need these stories because they can help us stay focused on what really matters in life.  

My encouragement to us all is to spend some time traveling across the landscape of Jesus’ parables. Tucked away in each story is a “faith awakening” that can bless our lives.

Randy Daugherty

Stephenville, Texas