Stories

 We are about to enter the week when we will be talking about The Easter Story.  Not long ago we were talking about The Christmas Story.   I have a bit of trouble with that word ' story'.   Because to me, the word story means something made up , fictional, invented.  And of course Christmas and Easter are as far away from made up and fictional as one could possibly get.   As the most real and factual and historical events that ever happened Im frustrated that we cant find better language to describe them than ' stories'.  Im not sure if its just an English language thing or if all languages describe the historical facts of the Bible as stories.  But we need to find a better word if we want an increasingly secular world to grasp the truth.

Since the printing press was invented in 1440 it has been estimated that over 130 million books have been published. Another 400,000 are added each year ( give or take).  Not all of these will be fiction of course, but a huge whack of them will be - which is proof if we need it that we all love a good story.  Add to that the dizzying array of film titles and TV shows all designed to whisk us away from reality and immerse us in a world of make believe......   So the challenge is, this week as we get the chance to maybe talk about our faith or about the fact that we are going to church, or answering the questions about what we are doing over the holidays, how do we tell people the history of Easter without it just being ' another story'?

Maybe part of the answer is to focus more on testimony that story.   When I tell someone what Easter has done in my life, who the risen Jesus is to me and how I have got to know Him, then the events of 2000 years ago suddenly become truth in the here and now.  Our testimonies are incredibly powerful and I think we dont speak them often enough.  Our testimony doesnt have to be all about how we ' got saved'.  Our testimony is anything we say which points to evidence of Jesus being real in our lives.  So if we mention that a prayer got answered, or God provided for our needs, or we had a sense of His presence with us in Sainsburys.........whatever our daily experience of being with Him, that is our testimony.  But its also a testimony of Easter.  Because without Easter we would not have come to know Him and His Spirit would not be released to us enabling that relationship.



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