Stories

Stories are powerful! Jesus taught through stories. Stories pull us into real life. My grandfather who worked in the field for Texas Electric Service Cooperative from the 40's to the 70's was the ultimate story teller. Every time I was around him he would tell story after story. They would make me laugh. They would draw me in so that I was a part of the story.

It seems like most of the stories he told always involved a friend of his named Peg. After years of listening to the stories of he and Peg one of the grandkids asked him why his friend was named Peggy. He wheezed, the result of emphysema from years of smoking hand rolled cigarettes (which by the way he taught me how to roll when I was in 1st grade! but that's another story...), laughed, and said
'He wasn't named Peggy, he just lost his leg and walked on a peg."

This was typical of his stories, raw, real, and funny.

Perhaps the most powerful stories that can be told are the stories of how God has interacted with humanity. What is the Bible but the ongoing story of how God has interacted throughout history? Sometimes we try to take Christianity out of the streets and into the 'cathedral' peeling away everything except a few important things we should know and do.

The problem is that a religion dictated by a list of what to believe and do is removed from the reality of what God is up to. The reality is that God is a God of story who works in the story of my life. In fact God's goal is to bring my story and his story together into a single story.

As I think about my life I realize the high points of my life have been when God changed my story:

• When I prayed and asked to give me faith in college and he did.
• When God brought a campus minister into my life to say "Shoulders, God is calling you into ministry and you are not paying attention."
• When I met my wife, Michelle, the very first day at my new college with my new major in Bible.
• When God began allowing a series of problems to occur that he used to steer me in a specific direction.
• When God led Michelle and I to Russia so that HE could pick out 6 children for us.
• When I watched God do things during the Columbine High School shooting I had always been taught he couldn't or didn't do.

Do you know what the commonality of these events are? They all happened in the flow of life, in the streets, not in the 'cathedral'. God works 24/7.

So what is God up to in your life?