Children love stories. I think we all do.
The greatest summers I ever had followed a daily pattern. I'd
get up and Mom would drive us to swimming lessons.
The first time I ever went off a high diving board I
was about ten years old. I went head first. I
thought that was the way you were supposed to do it except
that I didn't keep my hands ahead of me.
Apparently my mother, watching from the other side of the
Olympic size pool at the big local high school came out of her
seat not imagining I'd do a dumb act like that. And,
honestly, the crown of my head remembers the wallop to this
day.
That's an anecdote more than a story, I guess.
But your own kids like to hear your stories. They like you to
read them stories.
Some preachers deliver what are called "high rise" sermons -
one story on top of another.
It's the story people usually remember, isn't it?
Jesus told stories. His parables had that shape to them. The
attention of people would be held and perhaps they would more
than hear a story and actually benefit from the meaning it had
for them.
Bible stories are a terribly neglected treasure these days.
The Lutheran home is too often bone-dry of stories.
One hundred, two hundred years ago (in that poor,
deprived, pre-technological, pre-modern era) children's
literacy in Bible stories was light-years beyond how it is
today.
The decline in our civilization and culture parallels the
suppression of Bible stories. Once McGuffey Readers were
emblematic of public schooling in moral and spiritual
education. Not just new vocabulary but moral
foundations were learned by children in the context of real
literature, predominantly Biblical.
I know we're not going back to McGuffey Readers, nor do I
advocate we do. But Christian values and standards of
morality are etched early and deep. Integrity, allegiance to
country, and the importance of religious values in a
principled society flow from stories.
Schools once were filled with morally instructive stories of
strength, character, goodness and truth. But even that isn't
the most valuable asset of Bible stories.
Fundamentally, they tell of Christ.
The story of Abraham and Issac is the story of Christ. The
story of Joseph and his brothers is the story of Christ. The
story of Joshua is the story of Jesus. "Once
upon a time," we can tell our children, the God of history,
not of fairy-tale, began the story which is our life. It's
the account of creation and the Fall. It's the
narrative of God's redeeming love written before the beginning
of time through His Son. It's the story of God's grace in the
lives of sinners rescued through the story of the cross, a
story with the power to save and the truth to change the
world.
Parents, you gotta get your children Bible story books and
then read to them out loud.
Grandparents, go online to Concordia Publishing House and get,
as a starter "One Hundred Bible Stories" for your grandkids or
get Arch books to give as easy presents for youngsters.
Why?
Because children love stories, and Christ loves children. God
put Christ into every story of the Bible because only the
stories which begin and end with our Savior have happy
endings.
And won't it be blessed, as our kids become teens and young
adults, and pass deeper into their years that they say,
"Christ is my Savior. That's MY story, and I'm stickin' to
it."
Oh yes, I forgot to tell you the rest of those great summer
days. After swimming lessons, it was off to the library or my
mom reading books out-loud at the lunch table and at night my
dad reading stories to us.
I remember lying on my back and watching his face
upside-down. A mouth reading upside-down is funny.
But you never get enough of a good story ... especially
the greatest story every told.
