Why story?

Why did I blog about story? Why is the story important to worship? Maybe it's not that the story is important to worship but rather that hearing God's stories make us want to worship Him. Worshipping God opens us up to His stories.

We love a good story and the stories we love shape us. They pull us into other times and places and virtual relationships where we can safely try out this or that. That's what children do when they play. They process life as they play out the stories they hear and replay their own lives.

The stories of scripture are God's Word for children. They tell us about God and they tell us about ourselves. When we worship and focus on God it brings usright where God needs us to be, if we're going to listen and hear. God Himself in Christ is the God-spoken Word alive. He's not just a story. The Holy Spirit reminds us and makes His stories alive.

Yust talks about stories and creating a spiritual world for children. I think part of what she's saying is that this is a place where or a way that children can process seen and unseen realities. Stories help us to process and make unseen realities real. There are stories everywhere - all kinds of wonderful stories but I think her point is, which stories will shape our lives and the lives of our children?

George A. F. Knight wrote Theology in Pictures. It's actually a 125 page commentary on Genesis. Before I read this, one of the things that my husband George and I always differed on was whether the Creation story was literal. I said, "Yes, of course it is. God is God! He can do anything." George, however, Science/Math/Computer person that he is with a brilliant creative imagination, disagreed with me. "I don't believe it's literal," he said, "but I believe it's true." He said this because his understanding of God made it impossible for him to limit the God of the universe to only the material, literal world.

Stories have layers. Little children are more literal than their grown-ups but the amazing thing about God's stories is that if you're watching for Him and listening for Him, everytime you hear God's stories, there's potential to see something new that you didn't see before.

When you're with children see what stories they escape to and how they process life. If we're going to bring children to worship how do we bring the story into worship in such a way that it leaves children and adults wanting to participate in God's story?