Your Story Is Enough

Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your ancestors? Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation.

—Joel 1:2–3

When I worked at a church a few years ago, it was my job to help people tell their stories on Sunday mornings at our gatherings. And a funny thing happened. When we were at the coffee shop, when it was just me and them and their story, their story came out in fits and starts, unvarnished and raw. We cried and laughed and every time I was amazed at what God had done in this person’s life.

And then almost every time, when they arrived on Sunday, they looked a little less like themselves. They were kind of a distant, polished, fancy version of themselves, and when they walked up on that stage, they sounded a lot less like themselves. They stopped believing that their story was enough, and they started saying all the phrases and quoting all the verses we’ve all heard a thousand times. They did it because we as a community have trained ourselves to believe that a story isn’t enough.

I could not disagree more. We dilute the beauty of the gospel story when we divorce it from our lives, our worlds, the words and images that God is writing right now on our souls.