Story Telling

I love a good story. I've finally managed to get back into reading stories again after only reading books about theology since September. When I told this to my tutor last week he asked me what I was reading. Slightly embarrassed I said to him.... 'oh, just chick lit'. 


I confess to loving chick lit. You know what you are going to get. Girl in miserable state at the beginning - normally single but sometimes in a bad relationship - she often lives with flat mates who have a better love life than her. You go with her on a journey until at the end of the story she is happy - she gets the perfect man and more often or not gets married. How nice.


I've never met anyone who doesn't like a good story......


But is story telling an art that is getting lost? I've been challenged a lot in the last few weeks about the importance of telling our own stories. We can learn a lot, we can celebrate, we can mourn, we can look back with hindsight at what has happened and see how the plan came together. When we are asked to share our story with others we'd often rather hide away and leave it to someone else. Perhaps we think our story is not good enough. 


We learn so much about Jesus through stories - the stories of his life told in the Bible and the stories of him being at work through the power of the Holy Spirit in other peoples lives..... 


There are so many things that God has done. If we wrote them all down then there probably wouldn't be enough paper.... but we can inspire one another through not being afraid to tell our own stories of encounters with God.