Sharing the Stories of Our Lives
The Power of Story
Something was not right in my grandson’s five-day-old world, and he was letting us all know about it. Dancing up and down the hallway, I gently jostled him in my arms. Then I began to tell him a story. Speaking in a soft, lilting voice, I began: “Once upon a time, there was a little boy born to two wonderful parents. His mommy and daddy loved him so much. And they loved Jesus so much. And they knew that Jesus loved them so much. They told their little boy over and over how much Jesus loved him. And this little boy grew up to love Jesus too.” For a few sweet and silent moments, his cries of distress halted, and my grandson opened his dark blue eyes and gazed into mine. Such is the power of story.
Photo by Mindy Olson P on Unsplash
If we are people of God, we are people of a great Story. And as we age, it is our privilege and our duty to share our stories with future generations. Through our stories, the next generation grows in faith and hope and love. Just as Asaph called the Israelites to remember the wonders God had done in the wilderness so they wouldn’t be like the faithless folk who turned and ran on the day of battle (see Psalm 78), I will one day tell my grandson how God came to a fifteen-year-old unchurched girl who desperately needed the hope of God but didn’t even know it. I will tell him stories of playing tag football in the park as a ten-year-old, of meeting my husband in a college biology lab during one of the loneliest seasons of my life, of giving birth to a precious daughter who grew up to become his beloved mother. As I share all of the stories, he will see a thread, the bright scarlet thread of redemption that God has sewn through the tapestry of my life. As I share the stories, he will see that thread running through his stories too, binding them together, to God, to his family, to a world desperate to know good news.
Telling our stories is a way to leave a spiritual legacy, which Daniel Taylor defines as “the offering of wisdom from one life to another.” Telling our stories not only gives us pleasure in remembering, it also blesses the ones who receives the story. We must tell our stories, and we must do it before we are no longer around.
