Story telling: "Inviting future generations into the eternal conversation."
Psalm 22:30 “Our children will also serve him. Future generations will hear about the wonders of the Lord.”
This is the psalm that Jesus quotes on the cross (“why have you forsaken me”). It is also a psalm that speaks of a place of restlessness, fear, insecurity, uncertainty. In many ways you want to say, “oh David, suck it up and get on with; quit whining.” At the same time I see myself all through this psalm. Its interesting that it closes with this glimpse of hope of passing down this faith to the next generation. A couple of questions come to mind: Why will David’s children serve God? What wonders are these next generations going to hear about? What will happen if the children don’t serve the Lord? What will happen if future generations don’t hear about the wonders of the Lord? Why is it important to tell these same stories over and over again? What does it mean to serve the Lord? Is serving the Lord and telling the stories to future generations the same thing? How are the two connected? These are all questions that pop into my mind this morning as I’m thinking about how the faith only continues to exists if it is passed down to future generations.
I am a part of a generation that for the most part has chosen to not continue to live the faith. I think that a big reason for this is that we do not see ourselves as a part of the story. Our understanding of Church is not being a part of an eternal journey with God in bringing about the redemption of the world. Our understandings of Church are boring Sunday mornings; long prayers; hypocritical properness; irrelevant music and preaching; stuffy old people that want us to act like we are in 1950, etc. I don’t think much of our understanding of Church has to do with the story of Jesus and we have decided to do something else with our time. To be honest, I don’t blame us; if the faith is tied to some empty ritual I don’t want to be a part of it either. I find it interesting though, that there is a hunger on the part of my generation to know who this Jesus is. We are intrigued by Jesus and we feel that deep longing inside of us to be a part of the story; the problem is we don’t know the story and how we fit into it. There is an awesome opportunity today for the Church to focus on retelling the story and inviting everyone, everywhere to join in the story of God’s love for us through Jesus Christ. There is an important task of us telling our children the story. We must guard against empty ritual and be intentional about teaching the story to our children and inviting them to join in the conversation. We must be intentional about making intentional room for questions about the story that in our questions we journey together and become a part of the wonder of God. I believe that God is calling us to this task and that in this task we live into the Psalm and into this verse. We find ourselves throughout the Psalm, crying out to God with questions, passion, doubts, fears all to come to a conclusion that we must tell the children about the wonders of God that future generations may continue this eternal conversation with God.
Gracious God, thank you so much for inviting me into this eternal conversation. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to learn the story. There are still many pieces of the story that I need to learn; teach me, through the Holy Spirit the story of your pursuit of our lives through the scriptures. Open up the scriptures to me in a way that invites me into the conversation; give me the freedom to question, probe, struggle, and pull at the scriptures. Use me as an instrument to bring others to the story that they may be free to struggle with the texts and experience the invitation into the story. I pray God that you would use Crossroads to be a place where people are free to explore what it means that you came to us in Jesus Christ to forgive us of our sins and offer healing to our lives as we continue this eternal conversation with you. Empower us to be the kind of people that encourage and invite our children into this same conversation; empower us to give them room to learn the stories and then begin the journey with them. I pray God that this legacy of joining the story will be the focus of Crossroads that future generations will know the stories of your great love for us in Jesus Christ. Amen!
When we know the stories we are able to know who and whose we are.
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