My husband is a great teller of stories. If you don’t believe me, ask our grandchildren. He has several stories he has told to each of them over time that were truly of his imagination and he told them so well that when they were very young, they thought they had actually occurred. I chuckle as I recall how engaged they were with the story as they listened and asked questions.

The favorite of them all was about a winter when he spent time on his own with the Eskimos. Oh, the adventures he had! He seemed to never tire of creating new little details in response to their questions. Another of the stories that was a favorite of our oldest granddaughter was more of a dramatic play called “Save Princess”. In the story he played both the role of the villain and the role of the hero who came to save her just in the nick of time.

A good storyteller knows that a story is not just reporting a sequence of events, but rather the telling of meaningful and often extraordinary actions of the characters in the story that take place over a period of time. Some people say it requires a certain craft or skill. That is likely true, but I think it is most of all a gift.

I think my husband has that gift even though he would insist he is not good with words. I think it is a gift because he sees into the character of the people in the stories. The actions in the story flow through them. He managed to get our grandchildren caught up in the story of his life with the Eskimos one winter through the development of his character, what he did, how he felt, and how he responded to the challenges and adversities of the long, bitter, cold winter. 

Stories help us to make sense out of our present experiences as well as those of the past while giving us glimpses of possibilities for ourselves for the future. My husband’s experiences as a Boy Scout and his boyhood exploits served as grist for the stories he told as well as how to become an effective problem-solver throughout his lifetime. I doubt our grandchildren will forget these stories because of the memories they created of not only the story, but also the man who told it.

The stories we choose to listen to are significant. Each character we meet, each adventure we explore, provides a certain challenge to us and may well change us in some ways we may never even see or recognize.

Wayne Booth has put it this way:

“The stories we choose to spend our lives with are a reflection of our values and, therefore, our character.”

I think that points to why it is so important that we not allow ourselves to get caught up in small stories. Small stories never seem to reflect good characters or characters of good quality, but rather take us down a yellow brick road away from truth, virtue, and light for the path ahead. Our minds and hearts get caught up in shadow and deception instead of light.

I love what Daniel Taylor says in Tell Me A Story:

“We will be defined, as individuals and as a society, by the stories we choose to live and by those we value enough to pass on to the next generation. This is perhaps our ultimate responsibility as characters acting freely. What stories will we tell our children and why? What stories will they choose to tell in turn?”

Of all the great and gifted storytellers, likely the stories that have stood the longest test of time have been those that Jesus told and left for us during His life on earth. Generation after generation they have been passed on. The characters in the story never fail to point to or show us something about themselves that allow us to learn something about ourselves as well. They challenge us to be better than we would be without them. They inspire us and show us the way to go.

Jesus undoubtedly knew the power of stories. He used them often when He was teaching or just hanging out with His friends/disciples. He knew they would be remembered and that remembrance would show us Him long after He returned to His Father.

He wanted us to remember. He knew our stories were and would be broken stories that would potentially discourage and defeat us. He came to heal the brokenness of our stories and did so through giving us another story, His story.

As I heard a pastor say:

“The world says we are defined by our past, but God’s focus is on the future and who we will be.”

That gives us hope and His stories are the ones we should remember and live out.

I wonder how you feel about age or aging. Whether I view it positively or negatively, it will still happen to all of us. As one who is farther along in the process, I can attest there are positives and negatives as well as potential positives and potential negatives. Certainly there are things we may be able to control, but many more that we cannot.

I think we are more aware than ever that our choices throughout our lifetime will have a big impact along with those genes of ours that more and more people are trying to learn about through DNA testing. The generation above me knew far less than that and I think they were often more likely to accept it and deal with it as a natural/normal thing over which they had little impact.

Most of us are getting the messages about this whether we color our hair or not, wear glasses or contacts, wear a hearing aid or turn up the volume, walk around the block or run a marathon. We get the message that God designed our bodies to move and no matter what our age, the more we move the better our bodies perform. We also get the message that what we put in our mouths has an impact not only on our waistline and hips, but also how much energy we have, how often we get sick, how well we sleep, and how alert and energized we may be.

When I look at all of that I am aware that I have some responsibility for what is happening to me at each decade. Sadly, many of us (too many) don’t think about that as much when we are in our twenties and thirties when we can be putting good stuff in our health bank for the future.

Another message we hear about what happens with age is the value of relational connections and a spiritual life that enriches us and adds to the longevity and positive aspect of aging.

I confess that despite being married for almost 62 years, with two married children, and six grandchildren who are no longer babies but young adults, plus a great grandchild and another on the way, I definitely do not consider or feel “old”. (Yes, I do color my hair, have had cataract surgery and am now retired.)

I discovered a new word that thoroughly delighted me while I was reading Mark Batterson’s book, In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day. Some of you may have read this book that preceded his popular book, The Circle Maker.

Clearly the title about a lion on a snowy day is intriguing. If you are a Bible scholar or avid reader, you may know Batterson is referring to Benaniah who became one of David’s mighty men.

The word I discovered in this book after reaching the conclusion that I think I am one who is a “lion chaser” is neoteny. As a lover of words, learning a new one always fascinates me. This word derives from the Greek word, neos, which means “new, fresh, or youthful”. Batterson notes that neoteny “is the retention of youthful qualities by adults”.

Reading a little further I became aware he was not talking about hair color, walking speed, vision or hearing acuity. He included a quote from the book, Geeks and Geezers, by Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas that I confess I have never seen nor read, but it was so enlightening that I wanted to share it with you here.

“Neoteny is more than retaining a youthful appearance, although that is often part of it. Neoteny is the retention of those wonderful qualities we associate with youth: curiosity, playfulness, eagerness, fearlessness, warmth, energy. Unlike those defeated by time and age, our geezers have remained much like our geeks—open, willing to take risks, hungry for knowledge and experience, courageous, eager to see what the new day brings.”

If you are in your twenties or thirties, that may not excite you and cause you to yawn in boredom, but if you are in the decades beyond that I am guessing you might be smiling.

But there is even more good news!! Batterson reminds us that neoteny is at the heart of the kingdom of God and is, in fact, what God is all about.

“He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Matthew 18:2-3 NIV

If we read Batterson as well as this passage in Matthew, I think we need to consider how often we are encouraged to become more and more childlike in our faith and trust in the Lord.

Batterson puts it this way:

“Conversion kick-starts two sanctification processes: Christlikeness and childlikeness. Spiritual maturity is becoming more like Christ and more like a little child.”

I am not sure about you, but I want to be as filled with wonder at the Lord and all He has created and done as a child.

Neoteny—it’s a good word!

One of the stories that has captivated us for thousands of years is the creation story. We mull over how it builds from the opening lines in Genesis when God speaks light into existence. That alone boggles the mind − in the midst of vast darkness, He spoke and light was born. But of course he didn’t stop there. One thing after another that we take for granted and barely notice is spoken into existence. His final creation was to “make” man and set him in the midst of the wonders He spoke into existence.

Most of us know how that story continues with his creation of Eve and all they are blessed to experience and do. How staggering the privilege of naming the animals. Did the naming process include naming the trees, flowers, and other vegetation?

After the upending of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden when they disobey God about eating from just one tree in the center of the garden, we tend to think the creation story ends. Perhaps it is a bit like the “fade out” a director creates in a movie.

But it didn’t stop back then.

How could this be a truth we miss?

While reading a commentary by Douglas K. Stuart on the book of Exodus, my attention was arrested with these words:

“The common but incorrect notion that the creation story is to be found only in the first chapters of Genesis misses the fact that the biblical picture of creation is one of ongoing creation, starting with Adam and Eve, continuing with human society in general, continuing further with Noah and the patriarchs, then with the nation Israel and many of its institutions, and culminating in the new creation (Isa. 65:17) in which all who truly place faith in Christ are recreated.”

After reading this I can be tempted to say that of course that makes sense, but somehow it never resonated even if it crossed my mind at some point.

But don’t we miss it in so many ways along the way to that day Isaiah speaks of?

In the northern hemisphere autumn is approaching and harvesting of many of the latest crops is taking place. When those seeds and plants were placed in the ground months ago and began to spring into life, did we miss that it was creation in action?

Did we miss it in the spring when the robin’s eggs cracked open with new life?

You may be thinking that nothing new has been created, but consider that each human being is a unique creation. Each litter of puppies or kittens is a collection of mixed new creatures. Identical twins are still unique even though sharing the same DNA.

Add to that the truth that when God works through any human He created and some new thing is discovered that He left for us to stumble upon, it’s an expansion of creation. His imagination is evident every time a new star is discovered, a new cure is developed, or a new musical composition is written.

He designed us to be creative because He made us in his own image and He is arguably the Creative Genius behind all of creation.

We do not speak worlds into existence, but every time we speak our words bring life or death.

What are we creating?

Imagine all that lies ahead until God’s final masterpiece:

¹⁷ “See, I will create  new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered,  nor will they come to mind. ¹⁸ But be glad and rejoice forever  in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight  and its people a joy. ¹⁹ I will rejoice over Jerusalem  and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying  will be heard in it no more.

²⁰ “Never again will there be in it  an infant who lives but a few days,  or an old man who does not live out his years; the one who dies at a hundred  will be thought a mere child; the one who fails to reach a hundred  will be considered accursed. ²¹ They will build houses and dwell in them;  they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. ²² No longer will they build houses and others live in them,  or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree,  so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy  the work of their hands. ²³ They will not labor in vain,  nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the Lord,  they and their descendants with them. ²⁴ Before they call I will answer;  while they are still speaking I will hear. ²⁵ The wolf and the lamb will feed together,  and the lion will eat straw like the ox,  and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy  on all my holy mountain,” says the Lord.

Isaiah 65:17-25 (NIV)

Twice this week I was delayed on my way to meet someone. Traffic, construction, getting lost and missing a turn, and once leaving a few minutes after my plan of action were the reasons. But I really don’t know if there was something else at work that was for my good even though I really hate being late.

Sometimes a delay is just what life hands me, but sometimes there is a purpose I may discover later because that has happened to me. More often I don’t find out the cause. Delays and waiting reveal my frustration about the lack of control I have over so many things. They can also expose a bit of demandingness I really don’t want to see.

This week as I was reading in Exodus I was reminded once again of the delays the Israelites experienced on their way out of Egypt. After 430 years they were leaving behind the only culture they had ever known. Joseph was long dead and the favor these people had known during his lifetime had disappeared into torturous conditions of slavery. A careful reading of the early chapters of Exodus gave me a glimpse of how cautious they might have been to risk trusting this Moses who showed up promising God was going to deliver them.

Many of these people would likely have lost a sense of the identity they had before Egypt offered them safety through Joseph’s favor with Pharaoh. Even in the worst conditions, Egypt was home.

The plagues had decimated the Egyptians and the wariness of what response might come against them, I would think they were thinking it was time to get on the road to the land Moses said was promised to them. Little did they realize how long the trek would be − 40 years − or why God would take the long route to get there.

Most would not have considered it a divine delay, but it was.

The Israelites had a great deal to learn. Not only was their identity tied to the Egyptian culture, but also their thinking. These people undoubtedly saw themselves as victims to the tyranny of what was then the greatest political-military-economic power of that time. They were also heading into the wilderness where those people groups already inhabiting the land would oppose them and knew how to fight and had experience in battle against other cultures. As oppressed people, the Israelites had no experience with weapons nor did they own them.

After the plagues the Israelites would think (or assume) that God would not only go before them, but also make a smooth trek of it. If He was good and powerful and had demonstrated that during the plagues, those ideas would not be surprising. Fair enough, but they didn’t really know Him or what his plan was.

Douglas K. Stuart in a commentary on Exodus notes this:

“God was at work to bring his people to a right relationship with him and to teach them dependence on his provision for them. He was shaping and educating them, allowing them to learn (frequently the hard way since that is all too often the only way people really learn a lesson) what it meant to trust him in all sorts of situations.

In addition he was treating them in a way that has always been difficult for people to accept: he was not telling them everything they wanted to know. He told them what they needed to know in order to receive his salvation.”

Yikes! Here we are all these years later and those are still lessons most of us are trying to learn.

We want to know where and He tells us He will go with us. We want to know when and He says “in due season.” We want to know what and He says “I am with you always.”

The delays are still one of the ways God is educating us, shaping us, teaching us about Him and also ourselves along the way. He has told us what we need to know, but He wants us to learn to trust Him in all sorts of situations, to discover his goodness and provision, his faithfulness, and our dependence on Him.

The Bible is rich with promises to remind us of those truths:

“His massive arms are wrapped around you, protecting you. You can run under his covering of majesty and hide. His arms of faithfulness are a shield keeping you from harm.”

Psalm 91:4 (TPT)

“We all experience times of testing, which is normal for every human being. But God will be faithful to you. He will screen and filter the severity, nature, and timing of every test or trial you face so that you can bear it. And each test is an opportunity to trust him more, for along with every trial God has provided for you a way of escape that will bring you out of it victoriously.”

1 Corinthians 10:13 (TPT)

“So now I live with the confidence that there is nothing in the universe with the power to separate us from God’s love. I’m convinced that his love will triumph over death, life’s troubles, fallen angels, or dark rulers in the heavens. There is nothing in our present or future circumstances that can weaken his love. ³⁹ There is no power above us or beneath us—no power that could ever be found in the universe that can distance us from God’s passionate love, which is lavished upon us through our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One!”

Romans 8:38-39 (TPT)

God’s delays have a purpose.

He is not random.

He is utterly consistent, but He didn’t promise us a short easy route after we accepted Him any more than He did the Israelites as they were leaving Egypt for a better land.

He did promise to never leave us or forsake us, to lean into Him and trust Him, to come to know Him more intimately, and to grow our character to look more like Christ.

Throughout every day we are all bombarded by messages that come to us from every direction. They arrive as voicemail, text, email, memorandum, and even through “snail mail” crammed into our mailboxes. Some of them are ones we are eager to hear or get and others are not. Sorting through all of them consumes time and no matter how we may have felt when this barrage first started, most of us are weary of all the time this takes out of our day (or night).

Each message (wanted or unwanted) requires a decision from us of some sort. Often that means we need to give or leave a response as well and that means we add to the clutter of messages because we add to them. Sometimes we are stunned on a day without many messages to deal with but that would be rare because many of us write messages or notes to ourselves to remember one thing or another.

Most messages come as print, audio, video, or mixed format for us. But there is something about this that we can miss in our snowstorm of messages each day.

Each of us in our person is also a message. I was reminded of that while reading in 1 Thessalonians when Paul writes to the church in Thessalonica:

“The word has gotten around. Your lives are echoing the Master’s Word, not only in the provinces but all over the place. The news of your faith in God is out. We don’t even have to say anything anymore—you’re the message!”

1 Thessalonians 1:6-7 (MSG)

Paul is stating plainly that these people had heard the message of God’s Word and it had so changed and impacted who they were in every area of their lives that they had become the message.

This wasn’t about writing down something for someone or telling someone in just words. This was a complete transformation of who they were so every aspect of behavior, speech, nonverbal expression, and choice reflected how the Word had been engrafted into them.

And people noticed.

What a message all they met or interacted with must have received, but what about us now?

We also are a message to everyone who encounters us or observes us whether we intend that or not. We convey who we are to more than those we are intentionally wanting to communicate with. We, the message, are given to our neighbors, postman, cashier, waiter or waitress, mechanic, and hundreds of others every day who observe us whether up close or at a distance. Our values and choices are conveying who we are – we are a message.

Many of us may not actually know our neighbors well. Beyond waving or saying “hello” other interactions may not happen, but the message of us gets conveyed in hundreds of ways – when and how our trash cans are left out, how we handle our lawn and landscaping, whether we scream at others who live with us, if we train our children and animals to respect property, whether we work nights or days, or are regularly seen heading out to worship on a Saturday or Sunday. All these are our message to the world and when all these messages are combined, they convey quite a sketch of us.

That can be funny or sobering to consider.

But in all the places we live and move each day is there evidence that we are believers in Christ? If so, is it because we have told them, or they have seen us carrying a Bible with us or is it because they see or sense something more? Does Christ’s life in us cause us to be a fragrance (as Paul wrote to the Corinthians) that distinguishes our message beyond the words we say or the things we carry? Whether we intend to or not we are the message and for some, the only message they will really see or read to gain a sense of whose we are. Does who we tell them we are match the message of us?

It can be far easier to say who we are than to have the message of us actually convey the words we say.

The message of us will always be the one others remember more than what we may say to them. Do our convictions need to be strengthened so that we don’t need to plan or think through the message second by second? What happens with the messages we take into us through all and any means? It is certain they shape and impact us and the message that we become.

The Apostle Paul spoke to that as well when he addressed the church at Thessalonica:

“When the Message we preached came to you, it wasn’t just words. Something happened in you. The Holy Spirit put steel in your convictions.”

1 Thessalonians 1:5-6 (MSG)

Do we need more steel in our convictions to live authentically each moment of each day?

However we choose to answer that question, or live each day, let us remember this – we are the message.