A Light Unto our Feet
Our lives are filled with stories. Some stories are about us or our families,
others are stories that we hear. Our
lives are immersed in stories, stories on TV, the movies, books, and
songs. There are stories that we tell
and others we keep secret. Some stories are
worth billions of dollars and some stories are thousands of years old. Authors, writers, story tellers all work on
developing good stories, developing what will catch the attention and interest
of others. Some become classics, worth
sharing from generation to generation while others get quickly forgotten. Our lives are immersed in stories. And most of us a one or two that we would
call favorites.
How
much time do we give to our stories? Some
people watch the same movie over and over again until they can repeat every
line. My children are suppose to read at
least twenty minutes each day, sometimes that twenty minutes seems like an
eternity while other times they don’t want to stop and continue reading
longer. It all depends on the story. Each year, when my children go for their
annual doctor visit, we are asked the same question, how much screen time does
your child get each day? The
recommendation is no more than two hours.
There are days that I know they are watching more than two hours of
shows, so what are they watching? What
are the stories that they are learning?
How is that two hours of screen time forming their own inner story of
this world in which we live? These are
all questions we should be asking, no matter what our age. How much time do we allow the voices of
others, whether it be a movie, a show, the media, or a novel infiltrate our
lives? And what impact does it have upon
us? The Psalmist writes that the Word of
God is like a light unto our feet. The
word of God is to guide us as we journey in these lives. If we just live by the stories of the world,
what will our true guide be? What will
be our true north? Our anchor?
For
the most part, it seems our stories are often filled with some sort of
conflict, crisis, bad news, and the characters seek to resolve the problem and
by the end of the show good has overcome bad.
I just finished re-reading a Wrinkle in Time, a favorite story of mine
from my childhood. A friend of mine
shared how she loved these books, how the religious symbolism really spoke to
her. And I thought to myself, hmmm, I
must have missed something when I was a child, I don’t remember anything
religious about them at all, in fact, I felt like they were rather scientific
rather than religious. So, as I re-read
this book all these years later, I realized that the religious symbolism was
not hidden at all in the story but rather overt. There is light – good; and there is darkness – bad or rather
evil. And the more you learn about the
light, you learn that the light is not just good, it is love.
Today,
we give our second graders their Bibles.
We hope that this collection of stories is read, and re-read, and talked
about. We hope these Bibles become a
light unto your feet. I still have two
Bibles that were given to me by my church, one as a child and the other as I
went off to college. Sometime during
high school, I decided I would read the Bible from front to back, and so each
night, before going to bed, I would read.
There was a lot I did not understand and even more that I did not
absorb, but I read and eventually I made it through the entire Bible.
What I did not know as a child or
as a youth was that this book is not one book but many books. And some of the books are collections of stories,
some of the books are historical, some of the books are poems, and some of the
books are letters. There is such a
variety. Some of the stories are over
two thousand years old and yet, we continue to tell them. We continue to tell them, we continue to find
meaning in them because they are stories of faith shared from one generation to
the next in how people found themselves connected to the sacred in this
world. These are stories that shaped an
entire nation of people and stories that continue to shape communities of faith
in how we feel called to be a people of God.
Without
these stories, without reading these accounts of faith from one generation to
the next, we would have no anchor, we would be like a young sapling with no
deep roots. The more people immerse
themselves in learning these stories, the more they understand and see how God
is active in the world today and how God is continuing to call and guide us in
the decisions that we make. Our sacred
stories help form our own inner story of this world in which we live. By knowing our sacred story, we cry out when
we hear stories of injustice, violence, hatred, and greed. We celebrate when we hear stories of justice,
mercy, and love. Perhaps we even find
ourselves with inner conflict when the stories of this world collide with our
sacred story, not sure how to respond, asking if what is happening is ethical,
moral, or for the better good.
As Jesus teaches about the word of God, the
word of God known to us as the scriptures, he uses a pretty straight forward
parable. The farmer sows seeds,
scattering them all about: some fall in
the weeds, some on the rocky ground, some fall on the hard path, some fall on
the fertile soil. Sometimes I feel that
way with ministry ideas, let’s just brainstorm, throw out ideas and see which
ones might actually take. Not every idea
is going to take off, but if we don’t try, we won’t ever know. Some falls in the weeds and gets smothered,
some falls on the hard path and never has a chance to grow, some grows quickly
but does not take root and dries out quickly.
Good soil is no accident, it takes work, it takes nurture, it takes
cultivating. Today, we seek to cultivate
the good soil, with the gift of these Bibles.
God
never tires of spreading God’s word upon this world. Just like in a Wrinkle in Time, the over
arching message of this collection of sacred stories is that love overcomes
evil, that God’s power overcomes sin, that life can be transformed for the good
and that as a people of God, we have the responsibility to be agents of
goodness, kindness, compassion, and love in this world.
Don’t
let the size of this book overwhelm you.
Don’t let segments of this book push you away. Begin with Genesis and Exodus, and the
collection of Gospels. Six books out of
the whole, begin there and see what God has been up to in this world and how
God continues to be a God of justice, Mercy, Peace and love.
We
teach our children each and every day.
We teach them with Dr. Seuss and Walt Disney, we teach them about our
values, we teach them that sports, dance, arts, and education are
important. Our story of faith encourages
to teach our children and our children’s children about God. About God’s love for us and for this world in
which we live. As we spend hour upon
hour with screen time, or sports practice, or lessons and even homework, do we
lift up our values as a people of God?
Just as we absorb all of the stories of the world around us, we are
called to find time to absorb, to learn, to study, and to understand the
stories of faith shared by the people that came before us and then in turn to
share our stories with the next generation.
What I love to be able to do is take our modern stories and find the
connections to our faith stories and compare and contrast them. But I would not be able to do that if I
didn’t know our story, if I didn’t understand the ways God is calling us to be
harbingers of justice, mercy, and love. Be
a reader of our sacred stories. Be a story teller, be a messenger of God’s love
in this world and allow the seeds of God’s word to fall in the fertile soil of
your hearts so that you live into God’s hope that life can be transformed into
God’s greater goodness.
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