I'm on the regular email list of Russell Moore, teacher, writer and editor with Christianity Today. I find his insights on American culture and church life generally to be helpful. This week's offering was on storytelling:
"too many films and movies put a sequence of story lines together as "and then this happened." But the parts of the story that are just as important...were the ones hinging on "therefore" and "but." The story is driven along by the continuity and coherence and also by the interruptions and crises. If you think about the story of your own life, it’s not just one thing followed by another, but things that hold together by what came before and after, those sudden unexpected moments that changed everything."
Our lives are not without interruptions and crises. We have unexpected moments that change everything. But please God, not too many all at once. Challenging times are when we learn the most, but we need the peace of uneventful periods of time as a kind of sabbath I think. A crisis happens and then we find a new normal, until the next interruption.
The biblical story of God's people Israel follows this pattern. The interruptions and crises of exile and return are baked into the narrative. Yet the people are not left without hope, as the prophet reminds them; "Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" (Is 43: 18-19)
The New Testament documents how Jesus disrupted the settled way of Yahweh religion. For example, Pharisees and scribes were challenged by his disregard for their regulations about hand washing in Mark 7. Jesus was addressing deeper issues than external religious practices. Be sure that the living God will challenge us in our settled ways, but is faithful to lead us in all of life, in a way of hope.
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