Stories of Faith: In the Garden

  I love stories. I love telling stories and hearing other people's stories. For stories are the stuff of life. They are the way we express what is important to us and how we get to know other people. In a devotional I was reading this morning, it was even commented on that stories are how we build trust between people.
  We hold other people's stories gently. We share our stories with open hands. Yet, it seems to me that as Christians we seem to struggle with connecting our story to God's greater story from time to time. We may be able to tell a Bible story, or at least our interpretation of it, but we can't really articulate how it intersects with our life, how God has changed our story, and how we are transformed because of stories.
   How have stories touched and changed you? Is it easy or hard for you to share stories of faith with others? Why or why not?

Justice and Redemption

    We were all probably told at least once in our life that "life isn't fair." Perhaps there is no greater place we near to hear that as adults then in our faith journey. Guess what, life isn't fair. If life was fair, God would simply go back to the days of Noah. If life was fair, God would have good grounds with all of us to punish us for our sins by death, for as the apostle Paul reminds us that is the wage for all of the sin we commit against God. And sin is sin to God - without the hierarchy that we like to create about sin as humans in order to absolve ourselves.
    But praise God that life is not fair. That God's sense of justice isn't like ours. Thank God that God is in the redemption business, doing a new thing with our fractured lives and fractured world. And praise God that we are invited to be part of that new thing - trusted even with our poor track records.
    Next time you catch yourself stating that something isn't fair - remember that God, the ultimate judge and redeemer, is the God of fair, but rather the God of new beginnings.