Tell A Story

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been telling myself stories. I think the first full-fledged novel I ever wrote was more like a novella: it was a mystery story written in long-hand in a spiral notebook using green ink. I don’t remember the title, not surprisingly. It was, after all, about thirty years ago, the summer after fifth grade. My next novel was what can be called “hysterical historical”: my historical facts were so far from accurate, you might as well have been reading science fiction!

Why do writers feel this compulsion? Do people who don’t self-identify as writers also tell themselves stories? I believe they probably do, on some level.

And why do we gravitate to hero stories? Rags to riches stories? The stories where the good win and the bad are punished? The damsel in distress and the sword-wielding hero that comes to save her? The flawed hero who must overcome internal obstacles to save the day?

Because in each story we read, we see the Big Story. It is the story for which we are created and play a part. It is the story that speaks to all of us, whether we acknowledge it or not. It is the story written of in the Bible.

Don’t roll your eyes at me. I’m serious.

You have the Evil One who is out to destroy the human race. Like Godzilla and Sauron and the Reds in every espionage thriller from 1960-1989. And there is a Hero who will save them all.

You also have the rags to riches story here. The human race is destitute because of their own sin, and yet the Father adopts them into His own family, not unlike Daddy Warbucks adopts Little Orphan Annie and the Prince marries Cinderella and Dickens’s Oliver Twist is adopted into a wealthy family of his own.

We read stories about cowboys and lawmen because we want the good to be rewarded and the bad to be punished. We’ll see that, too, one day, as the Bible promises.

Every story you read, every genre, every author, is retelling the story our hearts long for: the story where we are the protagonists who can overcome life’s difficulties, the lost ones who are saved, the unloved ones who are loved.

We are the loved, the chosen, the Redeemed. And for people in this world who do not, have not, or cannot read the Bible for themselves, we Believers are the story they can read in three dimensional real life. Share your story!