The Gift Of Telling Stories

 “One of the greatest gifts we can give our children is the ability to tell stories” – Rachel Held Evans

Image by Anja🤗#helpinghands #solidarity#stays healthy🙏 from Pixabay

When I was young, my parents read to me every night before bedtime. I learned, of course, to love books through this practice.

Sometimes, rather than reading from a book, I begged my mother to tell me a story she made up on the spot.

These narratives usually fell into one of two categories. The first category included tales of princesses and dragons. The princess typically had many of the same attributes as the audience (me) and the dragon invariably turned out to be a good dragon. I was more interested in a dragon as a pet than a foe.

The second category included vignettes from my mother’s childhood.

Mom often talked about her first-grade teacher, who was kind and beautiful. I pictured her as Princess Glinda. She would ruffle her students’ hair or give them little back rubs to show how much she loved them.

Mom also described her second-grade teacher, who was gruff and stern. One day, mom piled a big stack of books on her desk in anticipation of the 3:00 dismissal bell. The stack toppled over and landed on the floor with a crash. Her teacher looked at Mom and shook her head. “I knew that would happen,” she sighed.

Looking back on those stories, I now realize they all conveyed a message.

The princess and dragon stories inspired me to be brave. Through courageous acts, dragons can be conquered and turned into friends. 

The school stories taught me that I would encounter many different types of people. Some would dispense head shakes and eye rolls. Some would give back rubs. It was up to me to adapt.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Stories are how we make sense of our lives and the world.

John Steinbeck knew this when he wrote the classic The Grapes of Wrath. Humanizing the plight of thousands of farmers displaced by the Dust Bowl of the 1930s had a significant impact on readers. Describing the Joad family’s struggles to stay alive was more effective at eliciting sympathy for impoverished “Oakies” than quoting pages of statistics.

In sub-Saharan Africa, 28 million children currently suffer from malnutrition.

Most people read that statistic and shake their heads, thinking, “What a shame!“

But telling the story of one family makes the devastation of hunger real and gives the tragedy a face and a name.

Hauwa and her five children fled their prosperous farm one February afternoon to escape an impending raid by Boko Haram.

Taking nothing with them except the clothes on their backs, the family fled in an instant. They began walking north in a circuitous route through the wilderness to avoid detection.

Hungry, thirsty, and tired, they trekked for days, passing bodies of people who had succumbed to starvation before eventually reaching the city of Damboa in Nigeria.

Here, they subsist on handouts from aid organizations and worry about where to find their next meal.

You are employed by an organization soliciting donations for the hungry in Africa. Will you tell the story of 28 million children, or will you tell Hauwa’s story?

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

God as a concept is so vast it is hard to comprehend.

We say that God’s love and grace are endless. He is all-knowing and all-powerful. He is immanent and transcendent.

You are tasked with relating the essence of God to the human race. How do you convey something so expansive, immeasurable, and limitless? How do you make God real? How do you make him meaningful?

You tell stories, of course.

To show how each individual is valuable to God, you tell the Parable of the Lost Sheep. To illustrate God’s command to love each other, you tell the Parable of the Good Samaritan. To demonstrate the need for tenacity and perseverance in seeking God, you tell the Parable of the Perseverant Widow.

You tell stories about great banquets, lost coins, forgiven debts, mustard seeds, and baking bread. You give accounts of using new cloth in an old coat, of wise and foolish builders, and of a friend who knocks on your door at midnight.

That is what Jesus did. He told stories.

This is how you make God real to people. This is the way to bring the Kingdom of God right here to surround us and make it relevant. It is our method of comprehending the incomprehensible.

This is the way God ruffles our hair and gives us a back rub to show his love.

He gives us stories.

And we, in turn, give stories to others. They are a way of showing our love.

You can find the places I link up here.