Living Stories

I'm Reading Rob Bell's "Velvet Elvis" at present. The section I just read was how the stories in the Bible are actual stories of history but they are also real for today.

It's stuff that happens every day.

It's OUR story!

For instance... Adam Eve. How many of us have always read that story as a history account and as a theological basis of our faith, but we've stopped there.

"Ok - so that's when "the fall" happened and that was the first Adam and then the world needed the second Adam (Jesus) to redeem us from having separated ourselves from God."

Ok - true, but ,wow, - most of the power is gone if we just view it like that.

This is our story folks. We are Adam and Eve everyday. We mess up. We separate ourselves from God. We make crap decisions. We want to be greater than God. Self absorbed. Glorified. We disobey. We let the end justify the means. We make idols of ourselves.

My favorite story is about Moses seeing God's back and experiencing the extreme holiness of God. I pray for that in my own life. Show me your back God!! Show me the glory of where you have been so I can understand more clearly the glory of what will be and that it is possible.

Or the story about Esther and Mulan and Jael. They are my "Mulan stories." Women kicking ass cuz God chose them and believed they could.

I think I learned to read literature like that and sometimes I forget to read The Bible like that. I learned a lot about human nature, relationships, mistakes people make, the ability for societies to rot and ruin, love, politics etc.... from reading literature because I was taught by really great teachers to apply it to my life. I think reading great literature makes you wise for the present because you transpose the lessons of the characters to yourself and those around you.

How much more so for the Bible?