I.
We all have a story. We know the chapters and the characters in our story. We know the moments of heartbreak and the moments of joy. Your story is important for we all are a part of a bigger story.
I’ve always been interested in my family history, in the lives of those who have gone before me: where they were born, where they lived, their careers, hobbies and any great stories of their lives.
My Nana always told me stories about her family. She told me about how my great-grandmother, Grandma Pospisil, grew up in the village of Solopisky in the Czech Republic before immigrating to the United States. She was a good student and did very well in school, but because she was a woman she was not permitted to attend the University. She worked as a Nanny for a NYC doctor’s family, who happened to be Presbyterian. Grandma Pospisil became a Presbyterian. She never went to college, but she was determined that her two daughters would get their degrees. My Nana and Aunt Helen did just that.
Grandpa Pospisil, also Czech, grew up in Minneola, Long Island, NY. He quit school when his father died and went to work for Kennedy-Foster Co., Inc. on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Kennedy-Foster was in the horseshoe business as well as in industrial hardware and tools. Over the years he purchased shares in the company from the Kennedys and Fosters until he eventually owned the whole thing. My Pop-Pop and Uncle Vinnie went to work for Grandpa Pospisil and they later inherited the company from him.
When I hear these stories and come to know my ancestors as best I can, I realize that I’m a part of something bigger than me; it’s a part of a life narrative that is ongoing, one that is cumulative and growing with each passing year.
Theologian G.K. Chesterton said, “I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller.”[1]
I am a big fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. Frodo and Sam find themselves as two young Hobbits in the scariest place they ever dreamed of, with the task of saving the world. Here Sam says, “I wonder what sort of a tale we’ve fallen into?”[2]
Sam could not have asked a better question. Sam assumes that there is a story, that there is something larger going on. Author John Eldredge in his book Epic says that the question “What sort of tale have I fallen into?” may be the most important question of our lives.[3]
We experience life as a story. If you are like me, you wish we were given a blueprint at the beginning, a map of what will happen when and where, but instead we experience life like a story. We turn the next page and see what comes next.
It unfolds whether we want it to or not, sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow. And we find ourselves in the middle of it just like we did when we were kids and pretended we were a part of some suspenseful adventure with love, heartbreak, and the unknown. Now we are living it: lives of love, heartbreak, and the unknown.
And many of us, if we stop, might need to ask like the young Hobbit. What sort of tale have we fallen into? How did I get here? Is this really it?
Part of living in the middle of the story means that you can’t skip ahead to the last chapter to see how things end. That means we often live in mystery not understanding how everything happening might fit together in a bigger picture.
In the classic TV show I Love Lucy, husband Ricky would come in almost every show in the middle of the story, in the middle of the event, or the middle of a catastrophe, and say Lucy, “You’ve got some explaining to do!”
Often in life, when a surprising page is turned—we lose our job, the kids move away, our spouse dies—and if there is a storyteller, we want to say to the storyteller, “You’ve got some explaining to do! I don’t get it; I don’t see how it all fits together.”
II.
If life is a story, there must be a storyteller, and I think most of us are wondering, how does my story connect with God’s story? Over the next seven weeks I want to invite you to look at the greatest story of intrigue, suspense, betrayal, adventure, hope, and life. It’s the story of God’s people, and that means it’s a story that includes every one of us.
If you are like me, you can look at the Bible, a big book, and hear the names Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Rachel, Joseph, David, Isaiah, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, and think, how does it all fit together? Is this one story or a collection of hundreds? Does the God of Adam have anything to do with the God of Abraham, and do they have anything to do with Jesus?
The answer is an amazing “Yes.” The Bible is the story of God and God’s people and of God’s relentless love and longing for relationship with God’s people. We will look closely to see what threads run throughout. Threads run from Genesis to Jesus and then straight to us.
We will see that the Bible is not a haphazard collection of cute bedtime stories, but instead it is the Word of God speaking to us a connected story of hope for our lives. We will discover that there are threads of meaning and purpose in the story of the Bible, threads that lead to Jesus that lead to us, taking us from haphazard lives to meaning filled lives, from accidental existences, to purposeful existence.
As we hear these amazing stories, and then discover we now live in God’s Story, we will say, “I wonder what sort of tale we’ve fallen into.” We may even say to the storyteller, “You have some explaining to do!” And the story goes on.
III.
Where does any good story start? With “Once upon a time,” or “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” or how about “In the beginning.” Our story starts there: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth.”(Genesis 1:1) And God is the Main Character.
When I go to a Clint Eastwood movie or a George Clooney movie, and I know they are the stars, the movie doesn’t begin for me until I see them; I’m thinking about them. When are they going to burst onto the scene? So a good story introduces the main character in the beginning; you can’t get to the story, or fully appreciate the story until you are introduced to and appreciate the characters, notably the main character.
And let’s make no mistake about this story we are looking at, though we will look at some incredible characters, and even ponder our place in the story—the main character is always God. In fact we get the word God in the fifth word of the story. In the beginning when God. That tells us a lot about the origin of the world, the origin of our species. In the beginning when God. He is the principal actor, the main character; God is the one we need to get to know to get this story.
An Introduction of a story, the “Once upon a time,” the “in a galaxy far, far away,” introduces the setting, the characters, and the initial things about the plot that we need to know to move forward. Genesis gives the Introduction to the character, the setting, and the plot of the God Story. The setting is “the beginning,” when the earth is formless and empty, and there is nothing.
The main character is God. God is not somewhere backstage, just aimlessly letting Creation take place. It is not an accident. He is the principal actor in creating everything, culminating in God's creation of humans who are remarkably created in God’s own image.
We learn a few things about God that are essential for understanding the whole story. First of all, God is all-powerful. All powerful, omnipotent—however you want to say it—God creates something out of nothing. Secondly, God creates in God’s own image. Crucial to this story is the understanding that we are not robots; we are not programmed to one thing or another; if we are created in the image or likeness of this incredible God, then something of the power, creativity, care, authority, responsibility, imagination and vision of the all-powerful God is found in us. So no wonder we write stories, and create things, and love children, and dream, and desire a story that is bigger than us. The Chief Storyteller made us like himself, and so we get to join in the things that God has done and God is doing. Lastly, God speaks to God’s creation. Our God is a God of relationship. It points to the very nature of God: God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God begins the conversation, the relationship, with that which God has created.
IV.
Which leads us to our first thread; thread #1: God speaks to God’s people because God desires relationship with them.
We will see all throughout the story God speaking to Creation. Why? Because God desires a relationship with us. This is the first of several threads we will explore that run throughout the God Story. God is consistent in this desire for relationship with us, his creations.
So I’m inviting you to open your heart to hear the voice of God whispering, maybe speaking, maybe shouting to you your connection in the Story. God is speaking to you.
The story that you have been longing to have, that began in the imagination and fairytales of your heart as a child, your desire for adventure, and relationship, and excitement and love, is not a childlike thing to be dismissed, it is the echo of the greatest story that has ever been told bouncing off your heart. It is the thread of God’s love pulling you into the story.
Pastor and Author Frederick Buechner said:
If God speaks to us at all other than through official channels as the Bible and the church, then I think that he speaks to us largely through what happens to us. …[If] we keep our hearts and minds open as well as our ears, if we listen with patience and hope, if we remember at all deeply and honestly, then I think we come to recognize, beyond all doubt, that, however faintly we may hear him, he is indeed speaking to us, and that, however little we may understand of it, his word to each of us is both recoverable and precious beyond telling.[4] This is the Good News of Jesus Christ. Amen.
[1] G.K.
Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Scott’s
Valley, CA: IAP, 2009), 39.
[2] J.R.R.
Tolkien, The Two Towers (New York:
Del Rey, 2012), 362.
[3] John
Eldredge, Epic: The Story God is Telling
(Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2004), 2.
[4] Frederick
Buechner, Now and Then: A Memoir of
Vocation (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1983), 3.
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