Get Lost in a Good Story

I love a good story. I'm always reading at least two novels at a time, and I'm a sucker for a movie with a good story line. In fact, one of the great things about what we've witnessed this week in America is the story behind the story. In other words, not just the story of the life of Barak Obama, and how he came to be the 44th President of the United States, but the greater story of African Americans in the United States. For in this story we see enslavement, oppression, emancipation and progress, culminating in perhaps the ultimate success: the first African American President. It is a story of struggle, injustice, freedom and empowerment. This is why I shed a few tears as I watched so many people celebrating his inauguration in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial.

Speaking of a good story, I am about to finish reading the Bible from beginning to end. This time I used a different approach, reading the Bible as a narrative. Using The Books Of The Bible: TNIV, (http://www.ibsdirect.com/p-574-tniv-the-books-of-the-bible-tbotb.aspx) I have been reading the Bible as Story. This version is very helpful as it arranges the books in logical and/or chronological order, and it removes chapter and verse designations (which were not in the original texts anyway). By reading Scripture in this format, one is able to read much larger portions at a time and get a sense of the complete Story. I can't recommend this enough. I have read through the entire Bible (including the intertestamental books from a Catholic Bible) in only 6 months. It has been a great experience for me to see the overarching themes throughout the different stories related in Scripture, such as exile and return, sin and repentance, and most of all, God's relentless pursuit of His children whom He loves. It is God's story, a story of love and redemption, and it continues today.

Another recommendation is the book, The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible by Scot McKnight. (http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Parakeet-Rethinking-Read-Bible/dp/0310284880/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232668722&sr=8-1). This is an extremely thought-provoking book that will challenge you to think through how God intended us to read Scripture. If you're wondering what a parakeet has to do with Scripture, in essence it refers to passages in Scripture that we really don't know what to do with, so we try to tame them and cage them, stripping them of their true context in the big Story. We must remember that each book of the Bible was written in a particular historical context for a specific purpose to a specific people. It is imperative for us in the 21st century to be able to discern what the original context was. In other words, what is the story behind the epistle? or prophetic book? or narrative? To know this is essential for us to discern the "so what?" McKnight proposes that by reading the Bible properly (as Story), "We are summoned by the God who speaks to us in the Bible to listen to God speak, to live out what God directs us to live out, and to discern how to live out the Story in our own day." (pg. 211). That is exactly what should motivate us to read God's word.

So I encourage you to approach the Scriptures a little differently this year. Get lost in a good Story.

Grace and Peace,

Kent