I feel like I tricked my friend Rich. Yesterday’s post was about Eutychus. Rich said, “Is it okay to say I don’t get it?”
First, let me say that it is alway great to say that you don’t get something that you read here. I am pretty convinced that many times what I say isn’t clear. I am very convinced that at least occasionally I haven’t said anything at all, that I have just played with words rather than letting words play with my soul. I should apologize for that. And I don’t ever want to waste your time here.
So ask when something isn’t clear. It keeps me accountable.
Now, to yesterday’s story. There wasn’t a moral to the story yesterday. I didn’t draw any applications, no sermons, no real observations. That was on purpose.
I wrote the story last night. As I was getting to the end, I thought, “What should I do to wrap this up? What will make the point?” And there was nothing. Other than an awareness from a workshop over the weekend that lots of us don’t know the stories that show up in the Bible. We know the sermons which are drawn from the stories: sermons about not falling asleep in church or sermons about making sure there are bars on windows where people might sit. But we don’t know the stories.
Sometimes every story doesn’t have an application. Sometimes it exists as just a story, or as a piece of a larger story. Sometimes it’s okay to read a series of stories of God’s work and get to the end and say, “He works.” That’s the moral, that’s the application, that’s the lesson.
I have written lots of posts and sermons and lessons that got somewhere quick. Sometimes slow is good, too.
—
I’m experimenting with video storytelling. Not explaining, just telling. Here’s a sample of Exodus 17.
Rich Dixon
Hey Jon–I didn’t feel tricked at all. In fact, I learned something important.
I was reading stuff yesterday morning through my own filter, what I was thinking about, which happened to be the Tucson shooting. So of course everything had to be about that, because the Bible is clearly centered on me, right?
What I learned–LISTEN! He’s telling me something important, and it may not be what I think is time-critical. Like you said, sometimes it’s just a story to be woven into the background of what I know about Him and how He works.
Listen.
LikeLike
Jon Swanson
well said.
LikeLike
Pingback: Tweets that mention Sometimes there isn’t a point | 300 words a day -- Topsy.com