Stories

Terri informed me the books say it is time to start telling Tripp stories. I love telling stories and I have a lot of practice with my nephews who often stayed with us and most nights we ended the evening telling stories we had made up. Like, how we saved Target for a ravenous grizzly bear or stopping the aliens from taking over the United States. One nephew still enjoys it but the other got to big to take part. He listened but stop acting like he cared anymore. Read this quote by C.S. Lewis about the Narnia series.

"In most children but in relatively few adults, at least in our time, we may see this willingness to be delighted to the point of self-abandonment. This free and full gift of oneself to a story is what produces the state of enchantment. But why do we lose the desire--or if not the desire, the ability--to give ourselves in this way? Adolescence introduces the fear of being deceived, the fear of being caught believing what others have ceased believing in. To be naive, to be gullible--these are the humiliations of adolescence."

I believe most people are like my older nephew that want to be a part of the story but fear that people his age don't do the whole story thing. That is why God's story, through Jesus, is just perceived to be for those naive people. Rational people believe in what they can see and touch. We all long for something transcendent but few people abandon themselves to the good news of the Bible. Guess that why Jesus said we have to receive the Kingdom of God like a child. Letting ourselves be swept up in a story we can't fully explain but we know we can't deny.