786 - Story Time
Spirituality
Column #786
December 7,
2021
Common
Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Story
Time
By Bob
Walters
“Jesus
did many other things as well. If every
one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not
have room for the books that would be written.” – John 21:25
The Gospel
of John is the last Gospel presented in the Bible, there exists little doubt it
was the last Gospel written – probably late in the first century – and John
21:25 is the last verse of John’s last chapter.
And what
John is saying in this closing verse of the Gospels is, “There is so much
more.”
The story of
Jesus is the Greatest Story Ever Told, and it is a story we will never fully
grasp in this lifetime. The Bible is the
guiding light of the Holy Spirit’s largesse, sharing the magnificent story of
God, creation, humanity, sin, salvation, love, and grace.
Stories are
how humans communicate, and it may be God’s most under-rated gift that our
narratives and languages spark creative relationships among individuals,
families, neighbors, and nations. We
rarely think of stories as “a thing.”
Yet it is our unique and varied stories that bind humans together, tear
us apart, define life as we know it, and make us curious to answer the greatest
of all questions: “Why?”
I think it’s
an easy answer: Q. “Why?” A. “For God’s
glory.” If one pursues the plainest truth
and purest proof of purpose, reason, logic, and the unmistakable presence of
human instincts that go far beyond elemental survival, God gave humans the
great gift of stories and language to investigate, discover, describe, expound,
discern, and most importantly share all that we come to know, think,
feel, hope, and believe.
In that
sense, “stories,” I believe, have a divine organizational kinship with
“time.” Both are God’s gifts to humanity
that we tend to neither notice nor appreciate.
God is outside of time in eternity, which remains a mostly-opaque notion
to my human mind. Christ, as Jesus, stepped
into time and into humanity to communicate the love, glory, truth – the story –
of God’s salvation for a fallen world: Jesus beats Satan’s hate with God’s
love.
Science, you
ask? Note that math and science don’t
provide stories; they provide facts.
Where the Bible is all about “why” and stories; science is God’s gift to
humans about how things work. Science
replaces God’s purpose? No, science
reveals God’s “How.” Equations and
elements and physics, discovered and defined by humans, are God’s universal
language: they are the same everywhere for everybody.
New science
discoveries alter man’s understanding, but they don’t alter God.
Stories,
everywhere for every person, are unique and changing and gloriously promote or
monstrously destroy human understanding and relationships. Stories we errantly construct can also destroy
our understanding of, and our relationship with, God.
But they
can’t destroy God; He is so much more than we can fully comprehend.
Humans have
God’s special spark because we think in stories. Animals are unencumbered with such
existential awareness. If you want to assign
“emotions” on pets, fine, but it is we who imprint “stories” on them. They possess instincts, notice patterns, can
be trained, etc., but who imagines an animal asking, “Why am I here?”
I say all
this because I read the Bible as the Truth of God and Creation, and I’m
thankful humans have the great power of experiencing and sharing God’s endless story.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) often tells stories to his dog
Kramer, who listens.
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