the power of a good story

have been thinking about how much power a story has to pass a message.

sometimes we need logic and reason, structure and order to get a point across. that's why we learn argumentative writing and academic writing, the nitty gritty 'topic sentences', ' thesis statements' etc. etc. I find this style of writing easiest to teach because it is so sensible and inherently clean to the mind. Any student can grapple with it - the weakest students in fact grasp the concept of order the best because they are so desperate for something to build something out of their confusion.

i find fictional writing, narrative stories the hardest to teach because you start to go beyond the realm of the logical brain and into the realm of imagination and feeling. Argumentative writing just requires you to think well. Narrative writing requires you to think coherently, feel deeply and see deeply. Good narrative writers instinctively watch the world, understand people and feel wonder where most people see mundanity.

Ravi Zacharias once said that grownups lose their sense of wonder because as we get older, it takes larger and larger concepts and things to capture our imagination and fill the gap of emptiness within.

you see, we were all built for another world, another time and place. we were built for better things in the beginning. but things Fell apart and inside every human being is a nagging horrible sense of loss, brokenness and emptiness. As children, we fill up that nagging sense of Something Wrong easily because we don't know much about the big picture of life yet. Swimming in the sun, gorging on ice-cream cones, playing with the neighbour's cat, hearing a ghost story, Christmas presents....all these things filled us up because our world view was so small.

As we aged, and experienced more of a broken world, we soon realised how truly large the gap within us is. Suddenly all those little things that used to fill us up were great but not enough. We needed bigger things to fill us up. And we spend all our life searching for the bigger thing - money, technology, ideology, philosophy, marriage, ambition, career.

Ravi Zacharias notes profoundly that the only thing big enough to fill that yawing abyss within us - is the very concept of God. The wonder of a God who Loved so deeply that He made HImself flesh to save a creation that wanted nothing to do with Him.

There is something moving, mystical about this whole Christian story. Sometimes I fear when we approach God and His Word with just a Mind, we forget He called us to approach Him with our Heart and our Strength as well.

Why do we feel so ashamed to utter out words of Love for Him? Why do we fear being laughed at for daring to utter out how much we Love and worship this Divinity? Are we too proud to show our tears, our dependency? Are our clever little analysis and intellectual theories and apologetics another way of disengaging ourselves from humbleness?

Sometimes, I want to get down on my knees in church because the weight of His majesty forces no other response out of me. Sometimes my hands are yanked towards heaven because the gravity of His Love and sacrifice pull that response out of me. Sometimes His sorrow and anger cut me right to my sinful, black heart and moves me to cry, sometimes to sob.

And yet, I am aware that choosing to worship in Presbyterian circles means that I hold back and keep it in check. Sometimes I just raise my hands anyway because I think it's all for God, who cares what the congregation thinks. But I have never dared to kneel because it just seems so ostentatious, and everytime I cry at church, I try hastily to cover it up, to brush away tears for fear of making the person next to me uncomfortable.

At church camp, I had loads of fun worshipping with a 15 year old girl in service. 15 year old girls never question strong emotions. They are at the age and of the gender that wears emotions unabashedly on a sleeve. I was glad she was my companion at the last service at camp when we sang hymns. I did not need to explain to her my copious tears at all those ancient words of worship, she just smiled and understood. She herself had cried the other night as she listened to me, J and P play Big Sisters and advise her about all the things she needed to look out for in her walk as a young Christian woman. She told us she cried because she suddenly felt God was so beautiful.

Any how, I sm not entirely sure what I am trying to get at. I think I am still grappling with the whole 'The Word is Living' and the 'Gospel is Alive' realisation I got from camp. This is me making sense of madness I suppose.

God's story is so powerful. So. Alive.
These days I cannot seem to put it in any other better words.

recently read Donald Miller's "Blue Like Jazz" - non religious thoughts on christian spirituality. He helped crystallise some thoughts for me on the mystical quality of Christianity that we post-mod academics shy away from talking about because it sounds like so much hippie kook-dom.

Am putting away my intellectual Christian apologetics books for now and going back to attempting to read the Word cover to cover to understand my God.

At the end of the day, while I can theorise and explain Christianity, when people ask me why I believe I know what answer actually sits at the edge of my smart-arse tongue, at the edge of my adult heart.

It's an instinctive answer, a girly answer, a childish answer, an answer that smacks of dependency and emotions and illogic. An answer that I find hard to share with people who are not Christian for fear of feeding the myth that Christianity is a brainwashing cult.

But there it is in all its honesty. An answer that I cannot chase away.

I love Him. I love Him. I love Him.
and He loves me. Stupid, nasty, ugly, pretentious me.
The simple wonder of it all...He. Loves. me.
and for that, I will try my best to give Him everything I can.

I can't think of a story that has gripped my heart, mind and strength more than that.