Recently I discovered a new audience for my story telling. There is nothing I enjoy better than weaving a good tale and, most important, an audience who seems to want to listen.
My great niece's have begun to ask to hear the "family story", and I am sharing my memories with them. The funny thing is that my version and their dads' versions do not always agree. Of course, the brothers do not even give their version until they feel the need to straighten my version out.
Unless we sit and tell the story of our lives, it will be at the best guess of those who care to know the truth of our past. When we "bother" to share, it explains a great deal about who we are today and why we act and react the way we do. Most of us are complicated reactions to our past and our present. Our lives are directly impacted by the world we have lived in.
I am still reading daily though the chronological Bible in a year. Those Old Testament books are filled with stories of the Israelite children. At times, I get so bogged down in names and battles that I begin to wonder why all of this is so important. It is a vital link between who God is and who man is. We are reading the history of man and His relationship with God. It is the story which leads us to becoming Jesus followers. The full explanation of why we needed Jesus to come. Would we even begin to understand why God sent Jesus if we did not first see who man had become? The story is a vital link to the great love of God when we seemed to make the same mistakes over and over. Though the begats are cumbersome at best, they are all part of the story. Though the battles are gory, they explain the history between God and man. Through it all, God is present and His love endures forever. Read the story and be instructed to endure with the encouragement that there is hope.
"For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction,
that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures
we might have hope."
Romans 15:4
Amen, Lulu! The Old Testament is crucial to understanding why we needed a savior in the first place. The Bible is God's story and ours.
ReplyDeleteBlessings!
I keep reminding myself of that as I wade through these long family histories!
DeleteBlessings!