A word about,.. Story Time

I’m not sure when I started enjoying the art of telling stories. Maybe it was in first grade, when every week — I think it was Fridays — my teacher, Miss Kenny would late in the afternoon and just before we were supposed to get out of the jail called school for the weekend, she would say, “OK, boys and girls. It’s story time. Put away your books, and sit tall.”

We’d all be glad to put away our books. We’d clear our desks, and straighten our backs to sit tall and wait for the stories to begin. We took turns telling our stories about the week we’d just lived through, what we’d seen or what had happened to us at home while we were away from school. Stuff like, “My sister Molly had to get her tooth pulled, and last night, my dad tied a string on it and yanked it out.” Or, “My grandma is really old, and she fell and broke her hip, and now, my mom said she’s got to be in a wheel chair.” The stories during story-time in First Grade weren’t usually long, maybe a couple of sentences, and often didn’t have much plot to them. But when my turn to tell a story came around, I loved it. Somehow, I’ve just always loved story time.

Something happened in that little classroom that had very little to do with first grade. We were learning to sit tall and  listen. We were learning that ordinary things could be spoken of and received, even if they were small, even if they were unfinished, even if they didn’t quite make sense yet. And even more than that, we were learning that our lives could be told. That’s not a small thing,

because long before Miss Kenny ever called it story-time, God had already called His people to do the very same thing. 

In Deuteronomy, chapter 6, God gives His people a picture of story time:  “When your children ask you, why do we do this? Why does this matter? Why are we stopping everything to remember something that happened before we was even born …?” The answer was never complicated. It was never polished. It was simply told:

The reason was “We were slaves… and the Lord brought us out.” That was it. Story-time.

Told by one generation to another, not as a history lesson, but as a lived experience and remembrance. Not as a sermon, but as a shared life. Somewhere along the way, if we’re not careful we can make story time harder than it needs to be. I can fall into the trap of imagining that the stories I live through every day need to be bigger, or more dramatic, even more enjoyable. No. They just need to be told. Shared. The quiet stories that don’t seem to amount to much. And the ones that sound like, “I’m not sure what God is doing right now, but I know He hasn’t left me.”

You see, when we tell those stories to one another, something happens. Faith has a way of finding its voice again, not because the story is perfect or even that exciting, but because it’s been spoken about. And heard. And held to be a true testament to the everyday grace on display by our God. So a question: What story do you need to tell today about God’s goodness, and who will you tell it to?