Three Stories

When I was a child, I used to climb onto Grandpa's lap and listen while he told exciting tales about bears and lions, cowboys and sports heroes. Some of Grandpa's stories were true. Most were not. All of them were entertaining, though. Grandpa's stories stretched my imagination and built my relationship with him at the same time.

When my children were young they'd snuggle against me in their beds while I told them stories. They especially seemed to like my tales about a fictional little boy called "Jack from Colorado." Since I made up the stories as I went along, I never knew how everything was going to end up, but all the stories had some common elements. I described in detail what Jack ate for every meal. "For breakfast he had homemade biscuits with butter and strawberry jam, sausage and scrambled eggs, pancakes with fresh maple syrup, and hot chocolate and orange juice to drink." Every time Jack left the house, he let the screen door close with a bang, and every time I said "Bang!" my kids would giggle and jump.

Everyone you meet has a story. Everyone you know likes a good story. And many stories can help us understand important truths. May I share three short stories with you?

A Paraphrase of an Old Testament Story

Long ago in a far away land there was a small village. Because it was small, its inhabitants realized they were vulnerable to attack if a powerful foe ever came against their town.

And that's exactly what happened. A powerful king from a neighboring land decided to take over the village. His soldiers surrounded the town and built ramps up to its walls in preparation for attack. Things looked grim.

Now there lived in that village a man who was poor, but he was known for his wisdom. While others had been cowering in fear, the wise man had been thinking about solutions. "There has to be a way to save our village," he thought. And that's exactly what he did.

Was it his diplomacy that saved the day? Did he arrange a shrewd compromise with the enemy king—a "win-win" solution for everyone involved? No one knows for sure, but one thing is clear: that poor man's wisdom saved the town.

Yet, as the years went by, the poor but wise man and all his achievements were forgotten. That's the way it goes sometimes. Wisdom saves the day, but it's not flashy enough to hold everyone's attention.

(You can read the biblical version of this story in Ecclesiastes 9:14-18. The moral of the story, according to Solomon? "The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouts of a ruler of fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.")

A Paraphrase of a New Testament Story

Do you want to know what it's like when God rules in the hearts of his people?

It's like a farmer who scatters seed on his field. If you were to ask him exactly how the seed grows, he would laugh. He doesn't know!

He can't control the weather; he can't infuse the seeds with sparks of life; he can't compel the seeds to move through their cycles of growth, sprouting roots and stalks and stems, maturing until more seeds appear.

The farmer can't make his crop grow any faster by staying up all night worrying over his field, or by spending his days staring at it. He simply understands that the fertile soil will produce a crop because that's the way God designed things to be.

When the grain is ripe, the farmer gladly harvests it. His job is to plant, water, and weed, but it's God who makes things grow. The farmer's job is to cooperate with God, not to explain how everything works.

(To read this one in the words of Jesus, the master storyteller, see Mark 4:26-29.)

A Little Story from My Childhood

When I was a boy, one Saturday in December my parents announced we were going to chop down our own Christmas tree. My brothers and I bundled up in our winter clothes, and with Dad driving the tractor and Mom joining us on a little wagon pulled behind, we headed to the woods on our farm.

Trees look smaller outside than they do inside. The cedar tree we chopped down didn't look so big in the field where we found it, but it proved to be higher than the ceiling in our living room. Fortunately our old farm house had a hole in the ceiling where an old stove pipe used to be, so we stuck the top of the Christmas tree through the hole where it extended up into my brother's bedroom. (I envied him that year, having the top of the Christmas tree in his room.)

The lesson I learned? A tree is usually bigger than it appears.

It's good to think about the cross, even at Christmas time. Jesus "bore our sins in his body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24). And the tree is bigger than this world understands.