God is in your stories

Jesus told stories, lots of them. 

One teacher* says, Jesus didn’t give lectures, write creeds, or teach theology. Jesus told stories and modeled forth a way to be.

If you’re looking for God and having trouble finding him, you may be looking in the wrong place. You won’t find God far away. You are not likely to need binoculars or a telescope to find God. You don’t have to travel beyond the distant horizon or the last planet to find God. You don’t have to time-travel or slip into another dimension to find God. Look closer to home. God is very close, closer to you than you are to yourself.

God is hidden in your own stories. Jesus told stories to train us to look into the depth of our own stories to find God. I guarantee you that the stories of your childhood are shot through with the presence of God. The stories of your life from just last week are soaked with God. Paula D’arcy says it this way, “God comes to us disguised as our own lives.”

When I was in 8th grade I got caught cheating on a take-home pop quiz. It was for English class. We were to take the pop quiz at home and turn it in to our teacher first thing the next day. I didn’t do the work, so when I got to class I borrowed a friend’s quiz and sat down at my desk in the middle of the classroom and began copying his answers onto my paper. I made it easy on the teacher as I was doing this out in the open in the middle of the room. He walked right up to my desk, took both papers, gave me a zero and sent word home to my mom.

Now, I come from old school parents who believed in punishment, so I fully expected to be grounded or some such equivalent discipline when I got home. Best to just face the fire, so when I got home that evening I went straight to find my mom. She was sitting on her bed. I stepped into the room and she said, “Stop right there. I have some questions for you.”

I stood in the doorway. She took a paper from her bedside table and held it up. It was my take-home pop quiz. She proceeded to ask me each question on the quiz. I answered each question. No problem. I knew every answer. Cold, no studying, no preparation. 

She put the quiz down. She said, “You knew every answer. You have a gift. You don’t have to cheat. You have everything you need. You don’t have to scramble; you don’t ever have to cheat. You have what you need, you just have to do the work.”

Sufficiently humiliated (in a good way!) I braced for the punishment. But she didn’t have anything else to say. She had made her point. She finally said, “You can go.” And I did.

All these years later that’s the punishment I remember. She held up a mirror to my mistake, so that I could see for myself that I was squandering the gift of my intellectual acumen. I have what I need. I don’t have to scramble or be afraid or cheat. 

When I think back on that story I hear God’s voice in the shape of my mom’s voice saying to me, Life is a take-home pop quiz and the answer to every question is love. The adventure is discovering what shape or form love should take in any given moment. You have what you need, no need to cheat, the answer is love. Choose love. Have fun.

If you’re looking for God, look no further than the stories of your own life. He’s there. I am sure of it.

*James Finley