If I was a Time Lord and I had a TARDIS, what would I tell my younger self?

What writing advice would I give my younger self?

I was six-years-old when I was first published. No joke. My mom sent in a story I wrote about a princess and a witch to a local newspaper contest. I won for my age category, and had my story published. It was my first taste of glory. My little six-year-old heart didn’t truly appreciate it. I really wish I still had that newspaper.

When I was in sixth grade, I promised my teacher I would write a book someday. At thirty-years-old I finally fulfilled that promise. Don’t get me wrong. I had written lots of stories, songs, and poems for years and years before that. But my first full-length novel didn’t come until my youngest was out of diapers. I mean, who can handle poop and writing a synopsis at the same time? I sure couldn’t. I’m just kidding, I know lots of fantastic writers who have babies. (Lucy, for one!) And I’m in awe of them. Seriously folks, I was barely hanging on to my sanity when my littles were babies. I do not know how they do it. But they prove to me, it can be done.

I’m not exactly sure how far back I should go to tell my younger self some advice. I think if I tried to explain the world of publishing to my six-year-old self I would just get a blank stare and maybe some food thrown at my face. But my sixth grade self? I would tell her, “Write sooner. Write as much as you can. Don’t wait to write that book. It will never be a perfect time to write it, so just do it.”

And start with the ending. I hate, hate, hate writing endings. My entire childhood drawers were full of short stories that had no endings. I think that’s why I was always discouraged when it came to writing. I knew I had natural talent from God (at least I was told so) but I could never finish a stinking story. I would tell my younger self, write the ending that you envision first. You can always change it later, but at least you will have an end.

I would tell myself to watch less TV. To read less trashy stuff. To learn to focus and read faster. I would tell myself that you can do this. You can write a full length novel, and you don’t have to wait and wait and wait. Do it now.

I would tell myself, LEARN about English. Don’t hate on it. Embrace it. Pay attention in class and do it well. Reading tons of books will only get you so far, you still have so much you need to learn.

I would tell myself to learn the craft earlier on. To not let ‘the rules’ define you or stifle you, but to let your creative juices flow and implement the rules later. BUT LEARN THE RULES. Rules are not your enemy as much as your hippy-I-don’t-want-to-follow-no-stinking-rules heart wants to think. 

You are not as good as you think you are. Step off your little pedestal. I repeat, step off. No, jump off. Get off the darn thing. You stink. You’re terrible. Just kidding. You’re not that bad. But you have TONS of room for improvement. Raw talent won’t get you far. You need to work hard. You need to learn. To grow. You need to humble yourself and listen to the experts.

They are the experts for a reason. Even if you don’t agree with them right away, just wait…you will.

Advice To a Newbie Writer

This month the writers at Quills and Inkblotts are thinking back to their early days of writing, and sharing advice they would give themselves if they could.

I have to go back nearly five years, to Fall of 2011. That's when my husband listened to me falter, and shrug, and attempt to explain this writing "thing" which I didn't even fully understand. He was gracious to give me two full days alone to write (with three children under 7, that was an extravagant gift to me). I cranked out 10,000 words in those two days. When the weekend was over, I emerged from my cocoon smiling, exhausted, and excited about what I had created.

I've added hundreds of thousands of words to those first ones, in the form of four complete manuscripts (and one partially written one), two blogs, and pages and pages of journaling. 

If I could go back to that faltering, excited newbie writer, I would tell her three things.

1.  It's not ready yet. It's not even close.
Stop fantasizing about your adoring fans, and how much they are going to love your work. You think it's great. It's not. Don't waste a single second thinking about querying (silly me, you don't even know that word yet), contests, and publication. You're not there yet. 

This will be a long process for you. There will be starts and stops, and massive "life stuff" that suffocates the writing flame. Let it happen. The flame won't go out entirely. It will be a pilot light, fragile, blue, and flickering in cobwebby shadows in the basement of your mind. When the time is right, the flame will roar to life again. You will successfully knock the cobwebs away, and open the document. The story will change in ways your mind can't conceive right now. After all this time, you will have eyes to see how much you've learned about writing, about life, and about God. That has to happen. You can't rush it, so just keep pinging away on the keyboard for now, and know that it's not ready yet.

2. You are not alone.
I know you feel like the only person on earth who has had this crazy idea: I think I'll try to write a book. You walk past shelves at the library, lightly touching the cellophane-wrapped spines as you pass them, convinced those authors are mythical beasts. They don't exist in your world. Normal, suburban nobodies like you don't dream this dream. They don't devote copious isolated hours to this strange task which may never come to fruition. 

In a few short years (they will feel long to you, but they aren't), God will make you see that your greatest need as a writer is to have a reader. You will pray for that constantly for a while, feeling acutely lonely, and then He will direct you to ACFW. You will discover a whole world full of people exactly like you, the ones who dreamed this dream, devoted themselves to their creative labor, and came together online to encourage, critique, and remind one another that they are not alone. This will change everything for you. Remember to thank God for this when it happens.

3. Take the pressure off yourself. God is sovereign over this.
You will read Ephesians 4:1 "I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge to you walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called." And you will hope writing is what God has called you to do. You will wonder, what does it look like to walk in a manner worthy of it? A thousand words a day every day? A blog post every week? Post clicks, likes, and shares? Saving up for conference? The Almighty Book Deal?

This verse will weigh heavy on you as the years of striving pass with nothing much to show for your work. You will begin to doubt this is what God called you to do. "I'm trying!" your heart will cry out in shame that you were wrong, and in fear that you've wasted your time, your witness, your life.
 
Then one Spring day in early 2016 God will pry your eyes open and make you see the pride in all your striving. He'll show you how your heart was tangled up in self-righteous knots, and how your ambition, though it has always been sincerely to please him, was also bound up in your own glory, the work of your hands, the thing you would create. You hoped it would please him, but you also hoped it would please a publisher; that it would make you feel satisfied, productive, and accomplished.  

That's not your calling, my friend. Your calling is so much bigger than writing, so much longer-lasting. It is eternal.

Your calling is to live a life justified, in fellowship with Christ Jesus. It looks like patience. It looks like obedience. You don't need to strive. The striving is done. It was done by One more qualified and able than you.

But there is work. If your calling is to live in fellowship with Christ, then your work is that which builds up the body of Christ. This can be done through writing fiction; through creating characters who struggle with disunity, who learn, and who grow in their faith. It is right to use this writing gift to tell the story of a people who loved the Lord. It is a fitting labor.



This I know today, after five years of writing: I am at rest.
I still don't have it all figured out. I still have made very little of myself in the writing world. Truthfully, I am not worthy of this writing work. I confess that to you, Dear Reader, and to God. Yet the work continues, and will continue until God takes from me this dream, and sets my heart on another. Until that day, this work of my hands, this thimble of foam, I offer trembling to Christ, to do with what he will--to keep it hidden, or to give it wings--whatever would be to the benefit to his beloved people, the Church. I can rest in that.

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Love in Literature - Part Two

By Robin

I love stories about love. Love at first sight. Love that sneaks up quietly after years of friendship. Love that causes the heart to beat and the breath to draw short. Love that pulses, quivers, gushes, consumes, and overwhelms. 

I love those stories because they stimulate us, awaken us, and enrapture us. It is the tension that keeps us reading until the end; the sigh of satisfaction when we close the book.

These kinds of love stories will never grow old, will they?

Though I will always retain a sort of affection for happy endings, I find the older I get, and the more I learn about myself, my God, and my world, the more complex I need my love stories to be. The less satisfied I tend to be by wedding bells and the implied promise of Happily Ever After. 

That's why I've begun to appreciate and love a different type of love story over the years. These stories tell of love that rips, shreds, and leaves scars one must overcome to be whole again. Or love that is old, lacks romance, and goes on plodding long after the pulse slows and the excitement wanes. It's love that must be fought for, sometimes lost and grieved over, and other times it goes unrequited. There is something heartrendingly lovely and honest about a love story like that.

When my turn came to write the second part of "Love in Literature" (you can read Part One by Jebraun here), my mind consistently went to two surprising works of literature. Both tell love stories that are at times sad and painful, and both end in ambiguity.


Astrophil and Stella

Written over 450 years ago by a man who's life was tragic in its own right, Sir Philip Sydney, this sonnet sequence begins with one of my favorite lines of poetry. After falling helplessly, miserably in love, Astrophil pens: "'Fool,' said my Muse to me, 'look in thy heart and write.'"

He had considered himself above the throes and fancies of love, but finds himself undone by the lovely Stella. "Mine eyes (shall I say cursed or blessed) beheld Stella; now she is named, need more be said?"

But she won't return his favors--out of virtue, or ungratefulness--he cannot tell. But he feels scorned and disgraced. What's worse, she sees his woe but doesn't pity him. When he finally works up the nerve to tell her how he feels, she stops his mouth with a kiss.

The joy is short-lived however. He is forced to depart, and now it's Stella who mourns the bitterness of love. After some time apart, they find that they've changed. Stella admits to Astrophil,  

"'But the wrongs love bears will make 
Love at length leave undertaking."

Their love story, as near as I can tell, ends disappointingly for readers who rooted for them to be together in the end. There is no saccharine ending tied up with a bow. It's sad and frustrating. And yet there is still comfort for those of us who have discovered, in the reality of our own lives, the often confusing, unsatisfying, calamitous truth of love. 

And who of us hasn't? We live in a fallen world. We ourselves are fallen, and we love fallen people. We wound and we lash out to wound others in our pain. 

Sometimes we accept the pain, swallow the disappointment, and choose to love love anyway. That is the story of my second favorite literary love story. It's a tale thousands of years old. It's meaning has been debated for as many years. Is it an allegory? A literal love story between two actual people? Maybe it's both.We don't know who wrote it, when it was written, or who it was actually about. But without a doubt, it's a love story.

Song of Solomon

She loves him. He loves her. Their desire for one another is unmistakable. They enjoy the sight of one another, admire one another, and look forward with great anticipation to their union, which seems to come in the second chapter.

"Behold, he comes...and says to me:
'Arise, my love, my beautiful one, 
and come away,
for behold, the winter is past;
the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth,
the time of singing has come."

The sexual imagery continues to the end of the chapter, according to some commentators, with ripe figs, blossoming vines, clefts, crannies, and grazing among the lilies.

But something is amiss in chapter three:

"On my bed by night
I sought him whom my soul loves;
I sought him, but found him not."

She goes out in the city looking for him, asking if others have seen him. She finds him, clings to him, and will not let him go. Then she begs the daughters of Jerusalem not to "stir up or awaken love until it pleases." (3:5)

Next comes the wedding, which seems a happy affair despite the events that have just transpired. They come together in the garden (not a coincidental location). She sleeps, but when she awakens, again, he is gone. Again she goes into the city looking for him, and gives the daughters of Jerusalem this message: "If you find my beloved...you tell him I am sick with love." (5:8)

Their response seems unhelpful at best. "What is your beloved more than another beloved, O most beautiful among women?" (5:9)

What's a girl to do when she's disappointed by love, and her friends are no help?

Her response is both sad and wonderful, I think. She praises him. It's as if she's saying, "He's my husband, for better or worse, and right now, even though it's hard, I choose love." It's sacrificial, mature, heart-breaking, and the story of most every marriage that has gone the distance in our broken, often disappointing world.

In the end, she longs for her husband as a wife should, despite her broken heart.

"Love is strong as death,
jealousy is fierce as the grave...
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it."

Is it a happy ending? Well...it's complicated, as love so often is. And that's why I love it.

What are your favorite literary love stories? Please share in the comments and join the conversation.

4 Fictional Stories: How God Used Them To Teach Me About Himself

We're taking on The Power of a Story this month by choosing a few of those stories which have impacted each of us. Jebraun described hers last week.

When I began to compile a list of the stories that have taught me in the most profound ways, I noticed an interesting trend. Though they are wildly different, evenly split between male and female authors, spanning 131 years between the oldest and most recently published, and each from a different genre, they all did one important thing for me. Whether intentional or not, every one of them elevated my view of God.

1. 1984 by George Orwell. Published in 1949. Political Fiction.

God used this story to show me the beauty of his sovereignty.

I had just joined a new church when I read this book. My new pastor was seriously challenging my notions of God's sovereignty by bringing to light things I'd never considered before and exposing me to scripture I knew, but didn't fully understand.

It's a hard thing to grapple with: Is God really sovereign over everything? Like...even my choices??

I absolutely despised Big Brother, The Party, and the notion of an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful entity watching you, coercing you, accusing you, limiting you, taking away your choices. It forced me to ask myself some difficult questions.

Is The Party just a very warped metaphor for Christianity?

Does orthodoxy really mean unthinking?

Have we been cheated out of something we have a right to? Control over our destiny? The legitimacy of our human emotions?

SPOILER ALERT: When Winston is..."converted," shall we say, that event which should be the pinnacle of the Christian life, it is not a happy ending for him. It is a shock. The kind that makes you want to throw the book across the room and weep for humanity.

While I was reading this mind-bending fiction, my new pastor was simultaneously pointing me to scriptures like:

Romans 9:16-18 "So then [salvation] depends not on human will or exertion, but on God... He has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he will."

Wait...that sounds an awful lot like Big Brother, doesn't it?

Ephesians 1:4 "He chose us in him before the foundation of the world..."

But...what about our autonomy? Our choice? Our control?

Deuteronomy 31:21 "For I know what they are inclined to do even today, before I have brought them into the land that I swore to give."

"No!" my self-loving, self-centered, self-important soul cried out. "I am not Winston! You do not know how my story ends!" My sinful heart wanted to reject that kind of sovereignty.

Friends, the Lord worked on me during that time. I'll never, ever forget how he brushed the scales from my eyes, and used that incredible work of fiction, together with the teaching of my pastor, to show me his glory, his mercy, his boundless love for his people, and above all, the beauty of his all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful sovereignty.

Just before Winston gives in, disappointing us readers who rooted for him to resist Big Brother, he has a moment of clarity. He says, "To die hating them, that was freedom." I want to cry, reading that line today (pg. 281 in the Signet Classics Edition) because I know the truth. To die hating the Lord and his church is to perish, eternally separated from the God who pursued you. That is Hell! That is the opposite of freedom. That's why he pursues you! It isn't to coerce you, abuse you, scare you, or make you do anything you don't want to do. Christians aren't put in little rooms, bludgeoned intellectually, and fed propaganda until they go brain dead and give in.

In God's mercy, he does the work in our heart that makes us want his saving grace. We delight in his precepts. We desire his presence. We request a renewed mind. We long to be transformed to his image. 

What God is this? What marvelous, generous, sovereign-over-every-single-thing God is this, who, "being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ... For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God." Ephesians 2:4-8

Have any sweeter words ever been written? Sorry, George. Your story is powerful, but Jesus wins.


2. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Published in 1985. Speculative, Women's Lit.
God used this story to show me the depravity of humans, and the corresponding depth of his mercy.

I wanted to hate this book. I began the story with my hackles raised, ready pick a fight, and fully prepared to slam the book shut and stew for days. But I found myself instead under Margaret Atwood's brilliantly written spell, aching for Offred, needing to know how her story would end.

It wasn't necessary, as the introduction led me to believe, that a reader be a feminist, or even have feminist leanings, to fully get the horror of Offred's life. It was enough that I am a woman. That I am a human being.

It would have been easy for me to dismiss this story if it was simply an indictment of God or Christianity. Surely that's what most readers are left with. Maybe that was Atwood's intention. I don't know. But I saw a more complex theme emerge halfway through the book, when Offred stumbles through the Lord's Prayer, struggling to make sense of why and how she ended up in this place. She prays, "I don't believe for an instant that what's going on out there is what you want." 

Bravo, Offred. 

God's word is never wrong, though it's often twisted and warped. History has shown us over and over again how power in the hands of men (and women), whether it's put there by the church or the state, corrupts. Atwood's story shows us the pain people are capable of inflicting--have inflicted--justifiably, they think, on their fellow human beings, given enough power. And while this story points the finger at those who would perpetrate evil in the name of a God they misunderstand, it's clear that the root of the evil is in man, not God.

Every dark period of church history has ended when the dawn of good theology has risen to take its place. We have seen, again and again, how God is merciful to allow civilization to right itself after a time.

Praise God for his mercy.


3. The Giver by Lois Lowry. Published in 1993. Young Adult Lit, Dystopian.

God used this story to show me the perfect wisdom of his plan.

This is the only book I've ever read three times. I first read it as a college student for my Young Adult Lit class in 2001. I read it again when I taught it to 8th graders during my first semester as a Language Arts teacher in 2003. I read it again when my kids were old enough to read it too, in 2014.

It never gets old. With every reread, I'm moved even more deeply to make sure my children know this truth: They need never doubt the wisdom of God in giving us a world filled with both good and bad.

They've asked the question of me, "Why would God let the serpent into the garden of Eden and mess everything up? Why didn't he just give us a perfect world to live in now?"

It's a difficult question to answer. I don't presume to know the mind of God. But I can remind them of Jonas; the first time he was cold, the first time he saw war, death, blood, famine, pain. He wanted to know why The Giver was showing him these things. It was hard. Upsetting. Exhausting. Unpleasant. It was awful.

But with those awful things came color, diversity, joy, beauty, creativity...love.

Without darkness there is no light. Things are hidden from us, and we are not better for not knowing. Never experiencing pain does not make us happy. It makes us dull, unknowing, unsympathetic. That's not what God has in mind for us.

This story also teaches us that human beings can never create Utopia on earth. We are too corrupt, too limited in our knowledge of ourselves. I want this story to inspire my children, the world's future adults, to resist the urge of political ideas and personalities that promise Utopia.

The adults in Jonas's world tried, and their intentions were good. They wanted to create for themselves a world where there was no racism, no poverty, no disease, no weakness, no hunger, no death, and no decay. It sounds wonderful, doesn't it? On the surface, they were successful. But in the absence of these things, there was also a tragic absence of compassion.

Lois Lowry skillfully and gently pulls the curtain back, exposing Jonas to the evil required to sustain his "perfect" world. The visceral reaction of readers when they discover what "Release" means is universal. No matter your age, faith background, or political ideology, you are repulsed, and rightly so.

Few books ever written can make such a claim.


4. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo Published in 1862. Historical Drama, Classic.

God is still using this story to teach me about his grace.

Confession: I am still working my way through this massive novel. I've been at it for nearly two years. I'm 800 pages into an 1,100 page behemoth. I pick it up in stops and starts. It's too much to take in at once.

It's epic in scale and encompasses so much about the human life. Social injustice, grief, hopelessness, despair, perseverance, integrity, pity, suffering, faith, providence, war, love, unrequited love, and dozens more. But the theme that impacts me most deeply when I think of this story is God's grace, and how we are to respond to it.

Valjean, like Winston from 1984, is an "Everyman." We see ourselves in him. No matter our gender, our time in history, or our station in life, we were once filled with darkness, like him. We have all been without hope.

"During the years of suffering he reached the conclusion that life was a war in which he was one of the defeated. Hatred was his only weapon, and he resolved to sharpen it in prison and carry it with him when he left."

Valjean did not expect to receive grace from the bishop. He did not go looking for it, or asking for it. He most definitely did not deserve it. But it was given, freely and generously. After he steals the bishop's silver, he is caught by the police and dragged back to face the one from whom he stole.

"So here you are!" [the bishop] cried to Valjean. "I'm delighted to see you. Had you forgotten that I gave you the candlesticks as well? They're silver like the rest, and worth a good two hundred francs. Did you forget to take them?"

Thus, he is not thrown back into prison, as he justly deserves. Not only is he free, but he holds in his hands the means to begin his life anew.

"I was famished when I came in here. Now I scarcely know what I feel. Everything has changed."

Is this your response? You, the recipient of grace so lavish, so sacrificial, so undeserved, you can never repay your debt? 

Everything Valjean does over the next 1,000 pages is a response to this gift of grace. Becoming  a successful business man, fleeing Javert, adopting Cosette, saving Marius. This is his way to "present [his] body as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God." Romans 12:1.

This heartrending story of grace has even been preserved in some measure in the many film and theater versions of the story. The producers can't help it. The message of grace is so pervasive, so lovely, so interwoven, there can be no Jean Valjean without the grace of God.

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What I Learn from the Stories I Read

by Jebraun

After Robin’s post about the power of story, which you can read here, we decided to each write about the stories that impacted us. Here’s the first of four posts detailing how stories have influenced our lives.

Like many writers, I love to read.

Even as a child there was nothing I enjoyed more than curling up with a good book and a snack to tune out the real world for an hour or two.

And yet, the stories I read way back then taught me so much about how to cope with the real world today.

_________________________________________________

Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

_________________________________________________

Even though G.K. Chesterton is talking specifically about fairy tales in this quote, the truth is that all the stories I remember most from my childhood encourage me to slay dragons that I face.

Stories like A Wrinkle in Time, The Silver Chair, and The Island of the Blue Dolphins push me to see adversity as something not to give in to but trials to overcome. They also show me that the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love are my tools to defeat the dragons in my life.

The Silver Chair, written by C.S. Lewis, stands out to me as one of my favourite ‘quest’ stories. Who doesn’t like an adventurous journey? Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum, the main characters, have to rescue a prince, and they make blunder after blunder as they try to follow the signs they were given. Through all their mistakes, they hang on to their faith that Aslan, their guide and the Christ-like representative in the whole Narnia series, will still be able to get them where they’re supposed to be.

I’ve seen this in my own life often. I take a wrong direction and perhaps am tempted to despair that I’ve lost the path completely. God has come in again and again to show me I can trust His plan; He will get me to my destination. The Silver Chair helps strengthen my faith in Romans 8:28 that reminds me God will use all things together for good.

Another cherished story of mine is The Island of the Blue Dolphin. Scott O’Dell writes with a hauntingly spare prose about a young Native American girl, Karana, accidentally left behind by her tribe. In order to survive, Karana must preserve and store food, learn to hunt and make tools, and battle loneliness. She ends up spending almost twenty years on her own but never gives up the expectation of her tribe coming back to get her one day. Her hope of rescue is inspiring.

Having hope is crucial! Proverbs 13:12 tells us hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. Karana’s story of her perseverance continues to encourage me to plan and prepare, not only for my future, but also for my present.

Finally, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle stands out to me as another example of a ‘quest’ story with a heavenly message. Meg Murray, Charles Wallace Murray, and Calvin O’Keefe must travel through time and space to rescue Meg and Charles Wallace’s father from an evil entity. Their intellect and reason aren't enough to save him. In the end, only the power of love can deliver Mr. Murray from the mindless hate-filled ‘It.’

This story shows me that love truly does conquer all. When I want to see evil vanquished, this story exemplifies God’s truth of overcoming evil with good. I’m reminded that God’s love saves, God’s love protects, and God’s love brings us safely home again.

I turn to stories like these to be inspired to 'fight the good fight' and see the dragons in my own life struck down.

Be blessed, 

How have your favourite stories impacted you? Share in the comments below!

The Power of a Story

By Robin

Stories have always been important to us. Long before they were on ipads, Kindles, and Nooks; before they were in paperback, hardcover, or leather bound with handstitched spines; before they were transcribed one painstaking word at a time on parchment and vellum, they wielded a sort of power in our lives.

In ancient days the most skillful Story-teller would gather his audience round a communal fire, and regale them with tales of the heroic warrior who left his maiden to fight a battle. And the audience would listen, rapt, shushing fussy babes, pulling loved ones close, wondering if the hero would ever make it back to his love.

That’s the enthralling power of a story.

Legends were born who are still with us today. Beowulf and King Arthur still hold us transfixed in our modern world. We still boo and hiss at their villains: the brutal Grendel, and the wicked sorceress Morgana La Fay. Even though we know how the story ends—we’ve known for twelve hundred years—we hang on till the end, wondering if good will prevail.

That’s the transcendent power of a story.

In the fourth century, the world changed forever. Rome converted, and with it, most of its territories, stretching far west, to include a little island nation full of Britons. “Before Christianity,” according to the Norton Anthology of English Literature, Edition 6, Volume 1, “there had been no books [in English].”

This is my decades old, frayed, taped, beloved Norton, read by every NWMSU student who majored in English during its tenure.

Time passed, invaders became residents, and the language, a jumbled comingling of Saxon (Germanic) and Norman (Italic) evolved into Middle English. That’s when the Story-teller harnessed his power by putting words onto a page. He became the Writer.

By the twelfth century, the Writer began to use the themes of love and war, which were so often connected in the world of the chivalrous knight, as a means of exploring psychological and ethical problems (again, according to the Norton Anthology). That's when men began to see themselves in the character of the knight. They watched as the knight navigated trials contrived by the Writer, and weighed the knight’s emergence as victor or downtrod against what they knew about themselves, their world, and their God, wondering what they would do in the place of the knight.

That’s the self-actualizing power of a story.

This has all been true since the first evidence we have of stories being told orally round the fire. It was true before, in the dark of cave dwellings where no remnant was left for us to study and marvel at. It’s true because our Lord is the ultimate Story-teller. It’s the medium by which he brings us to himself. “In the beginning,” begins the story of a bridegroom who goes after his bride.

We are enthralled by it, wondering if she will take his outstretched hand.

We read the same passages again and again in our study, captivated anew by the transcendent, never-changing truth.

We see ourselves in it. We are the bride, looking down at the bridegroom’s outstretched hand, a hand we don’t deserve. We come to know our own wretchedness by reading of his holiness. We take his hand, accept his mercy, and we are made new.

That’s the transformative power of THE story.

Stories born of human minds cannot hold the same power over us. We need not fear them, ban them, censor them, burn them, or hide them.

Even dangerous stories, terrible stories, and stories written by authors who hate God and his good gifts have the power to make us think.  

That, friends, is when the magic happens! That's when the Story-teller's power becomes the Story-hearer's power. The Hearer, gifted by the Creator already with the ability to reason and reflect, now possesses the power to revere or reject the truth of the Story-teller. 

It's an amazing power, isn't it? The power to think. Analyze. Critique. Decide. Whether the stories are good or bad, thinking about them makes us smarter, more mature, more aware, more compassionate, better human beings. It opens our eyes to new ideas--right ideas and wrong ideas. That doesn't matter. What matters is we use our power to think about what we're reading, and grow from it.

This is why we crave stories which do more for us than entertain. It's why our love of story has endured many thousands of years, and why it will continue long after our culture changes, our borders shift, and our language evolves all over again. 

We may not read our stories on Kindles and ipads in a hundred years, or a thousand years, or ten thousand years, but we will, in some way, be gathered round the communal fire to hear the skilled Story-teller weave us a compelling tale.

Unlike us, the story will endure. It will never die.

That's the power of a story.

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The Ultimate Story

by Jebraun Clifford

I remember when I first learned to read words and sentences strung together to make a story. At the tender age of five, I sat with “Little Bear” by Maurice Sendak on my lap. At the beginning, only the first page made any sense. Then, as I grew in confidence and ability, page after page came alive.

The story transported me to another world.

I traveled with Little Bear to the moon, tasted the birthday cake his mother baked for him, felt the soft crunch of snow beneath his feet.

Throughout my childhood, this scenario was repeated again and again as I moved to more challenging books with fewer illustrations and longer chapters. Jenny and the Cat Club, Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables. 

Stories entertained me for hours, fueled my imagination, and satisfied my soul.

I lived for the days when my teacher would pass out the Scholastic book club order sheets. My parents put limits on how much I could spend (otherwise I’d buy every book!) and I’d spend hours poring over each description, agonizing over this title or that.

One of my purchases was a condensed version of “Little Women,” and I read it so many times that the pages drifted out of the spine. Imagine my delight when my grandmother gave me a beautiful hardback copy, and I found undiscovered chapters with more details of the March girls’ antics. Of course, I broke down in tears when I read that Jo didn’t marry Laurie, and even the appearance of kindly Professor Bhaer wasn’t enough to quench my disappointment.

So many of the stories I read made deep, lasting impacts on me, and I can truthfully say that some changed the way I think.

For this is the magic of stories.

Stories engage us. 

Challenge us. 

Entreat us.

Madeleine L’Engle says “stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.”

My favourite story is one I find myself returning to again and again. In each season of my life, it’s meant something a little different.

Every time I read it, I’m struck anew by its richness and depth.

The story tells of an individual who left his home to seek a bride. 

To rescue her from destruction and death. 

To find all things lost. 

To heal all things wounded. 

To bind all things broken.

To establish an ever-expanding kingdom.

This quest would cost the God-man his life, a price he was more than willing to pay.

Would you be interested in such a story? Would it surprise you to discover that you are the bride? And that you have a part to play in creating this kingdom? 

For we’re all involved in this great cosmic story. An epic struggle against good and evil with a cowardly antagonist and a glorious Hero. Of princesses, warriors, and kings. This story has spanned the ages and will continue on into eternity.

And this time, there will be no let-down at the end of the story. No disappointment. No tears.

This is the ultimate Story, and one I love to read again and again. Do you know it?

Be blessed,