It's All About Stories
We all love stories. Stories can be entertaining, teach a lesson, carry on family traditions, and do many more things. Stories can change our lives, sometimes in even greater ways than experiences can. When each of our kids left for college, I gave them an important piece of advice – I told them to “make stories”. And they did. However, I fear that the power of stories is sometimes lost on us, and that’s a shame.
When I worked at World Vision, their tagline was “Orange is the color of hope”, which was inventive and played off their orange logo (somebody tapped the marketing dept. for that one). However, I learned that while it was a good tagline, hope was not conveyed to child sponsors through a logo, but through stories. When sponsors heard stories about the living conditions of children in other countries, their family hardships, their dreams, or how donor contributions helped, the stories made it come alive.
Stories work the same way in families. My father, as a small boy growing up in The Netherlands, had some great stories, from saving his sister who fell into the canal by pulling her out by her hair, to narrowly escaping the Nazis many times during World War II. His stories always intrigued and delighted me, and I am thankful that some of them have become part of the “body of work” in our family. To be fair, not all his stories were so idyllic.
There’s one story I’ll never forget. Their pastor visited their home, putting his wooden shoes outside on the doorstep, and my young father proceeded to relieve himself into the wooden shoes from an open second floor window. As you may recall, God called my father into the ministry later in life, so there is more than a little irony and humor in that story. It’s interesting how it goes from being a story of rebellion, to one showing God’s plan for his life; a story about an incorrigible child, to a story about a pastor who led many to the Lord over his ministry. Don’t ever tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humor.
In a similar vein, although thankfully less extreme, his son has stories, such as cutting down a tree outside his dorm building with a steak knife and dragging it inside to use as a Christmas tree (I’m sorry Calvin College – I’ll pay to have a new one planted if you’d like). Or stories of him walking security rounds through dark campus buildings with his girlfriend. I have to admit that I can’t guarantee all the doors were 100% secure on some of those nights, but you have to acknowledge that kissing on the darkened stage of the college’s concert hall is pretty romantic. That girl later married me, so I think the college will forgive me at this point.
Stories tie us to the past, present, and future. They tell of the difficult times we go through as families and God’s provision and care for us. They tell of ways in which we supported each other when things became tough. Stories are about laughter and, unfortunately, sometimes stories are about loss and pain. Stories tell our lives in compelling ways, similar in many ways to the oral tradition used among the Israelites for centuries, telling of God’s wonder and might.
Years ago, our family started a list – a list of stories. Each entry on the list is simply one sentence that reminds the reader of a particular family story. As our kids grew, Ruth and I would tell the associated stories about our life and that of our parents, and we would tell them over and again. Our kids thought we were losing our minds and forgetting that we already told them, but there was a method to our madness. We wanted to make sure that someday when we are gone and they and their children want to remember the funny, heartbreaking, or poignant stories of our family’s life, they will simply need that sheet to trigger the memory of a story, and will then be able to retell it from the many times they heard it. Our life stories are part of God’s majestic handiwork, and we need to give witness to that.
In a similar way, the history of our country is a set of stories. From our split from England, to centuries of innovation and God’s blessing, and up to today. The stories were shaped in large part by political forces, from our Constitution, to laws that created an environment ripe for growth, so that we could finally become the preeminent world power in a mere 200 years. Our country may not last forever, but while it does, we owe it to our children and grandchildren to use public policy to ensure that the stories they tell will be good stories, and not bad ones. They should be stories of standing for our deeply held beliefs, protecting our children, preserving our families, and defending our freedoms. In short, stories of bravery.
Lord willing, someday Ruth and I will have a chance to tell our grandchildren the most important stories that were part of our lives. We will tell them the good and the bad – the stories of pain, laughter, forgiveness, and Christ’s redemptive love for us. I don’t plan to tell them the Christmas tree story, except as a cautionary tale. Kissing at night in the darkened concert hall? That one I might tell.