Earlier this year, I chose to use the below story as a means of colouring in my sermon.
Before you read it again, I want to propose that the stories we hear, and tell, the stories we love, and fill our minds with shape our values and our affections.
There was once a boy, a smart and mild child, yet who had a compulsive tendency to use his hands for evil. When he was very young, much to his parents’ horror, their sweet boy without provocation was prone to use his hands to hit or grab or pull his siblings or friends.
As he grew up, his hands were used less as weapons, and more as tools to take what wasn’t his – whether it be food from local merchants or the contents of passes pockets that he would sell to fund his own revelries. Later his hands were the means of lifting the drink to his lips, in endless repetition, and those same hands became the cause of fear for his gentle parents. So as a young man, it was the destruction of his hands that found him kicked to the street, destitute, unwanted, empty handed.
Yet, in the darkness of that cobbled gutter amidst the decaying scent of refuse, it was the calloused hands of a stranger that lifted him up with strong arms. That took him, cleaned him, clothed him, fed him… and welcomed him into his home, as if that boy was the son he had always loved. And then that new found father, put that young man’s hands to work alongside him as a blacksmith. Soon – the hands that were once weapons and tools for thievery and debauchery, were instead wielding tools to craft swords and shields used in the hands of others to defend the city. Those hands once idle, now worked, the hands that once took, now used what they had, to give, and the hands that once hurt, now protected.
This story, in one sense is false, as false as any other fictional work – but in another sense it is among the truest of stories because in many ways we are all that young boy. We are all those who have used hands, tongues and lives for our own glory and satisfaction and as a result, done what is evil. For any who are in Christ, we like this young man, are those who have been pulled from the sinful gutter of our own pursuits, and been adopted as beloved children. Now, rather than just stopping the former habits of life, we are to put our lives to the work of becoming like our new Father, sidling up next to him and learning his trade.
Imagining the Truth
When we want to teach a lesson, so often we use a story – think ‘The boy who cried wolf’. When we are getting to know someone, having moved beyond sharing what we do with our time, we share stories. Of where we grew up, what we love, what our family is like and what has happened. We are so often captivated by stories, whether they be through books or movies or games.
In the last year, the Lomman household have finished Little Pilgrim’s Progress, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Hobbit. Respectively, the first is an allegory for the Christian life, the second a supposal (to use Lewis’ description) of the Biblical Gospel, and the last a fantasy written from a Christian worldview that wrestles with and points the spotlight at the truths of scripture. In doing so, not only am I encouraged by how these stories capture little minds with gospel truths, but I am reminded of how my little mind is swept up once again with the goodness and glory of God.
The imagination is a weapon that when directed and fed by good, true and beautiful stories can lead us to greater delight in Christ and his world.
If you are a parent, or have any role to play in raising little ones, let me urge you to feed your children’s imaginations with gospel truths. Do so through scripture, through songs, through catechisms and also through stories. The ones I mentioned are a great place to start, or you could also look into The Wingfeather Saga or The Green Ember Series. But more than that, here is my encouragement: grow up into maturity, learn more, get a job, be responsible and all that… but don’t grow out of delighting in good stories. We are trained to consume information that is no more than 10-60 seconds long these days, and as a consequence we are losing the ability to dwell. In the process our imagination is quenched and our creativity malnourished. Fight that… and just trying to stop looking at your phone won’t work – instead you need to replace it with something, maybe a good tale is a strategy to try. Be moved by the pilgrimage of Christian, and the many temptations that beckon him to leave the king’s path. See the bodily resurrection of Christ when the recently slain Aslan stoops down to lick Susan’s forehead, assuring her that she isn’t seeing a ghost. Or be challenged to not give in to ‘Dragon Sickness’ (greed) in this life whilst we look to the next with Thorin who now ‘goes to the halls of waiting to sit among [his] fathers, until the world is renewed.’
When we read the scriptures, we find that God gave us a story, the true story. History. His Story. I love when a good author will foreshadow what is going to happen in their story – sometimes whole books before it does – in such a way that when the twist comes, and all is revealed, you were prepared to receive it. God does this very thing, in real time, in real events within human history. As we have seen in multiple ways in Exodus already, God is orchestrating the threads of life on earth to point to the centre of His-story, the person and work of Jesus!
Grace to you, Glory to God. |
