This Sunday in worship we will sing, “I Love to Tell the Story.” Telling the story of “Jesus and his love” is a central part of our faith. As we tell the story of our faith we become a part of it and it begins to make sense for our lives.
The old, old story is one of God taking that which is tattered and mending it. God listens carefully to the story of our lives as we tell our story to God through prayer. We do not have to make the story perfect. We do not have to worry that God will love us less because of it. We are invited to share with complete honesty, trusting that God listens with compassion and with grace. Even in these moments of trusting God by telling our story, especially where our lives feel the most tattered, the mending begins.
God has created a world in which things don’t stay perfect and pristine. So often we wish they did, especially when we are impacted by others in hurtful and traumatic ways. Instead, God did something better. God created a world where there could be learning and growing, risk and challenges, successes and setbacks. God created us to be filled with love and creativity and gave us free will, including the many choices each day that impact one another for good and for harm. And then God created a process so that when harm is done, we can heal, and in the healing we can experience growth and emerge even stronger.
We know this process in scripture as salvation history: God calls and draws close to God’s people, they choose to turn away and harm God and each other, God calls them to repentance, they confess, God forgives, and they experience healing and restoration. The healing begins when they cry out to God and tell their story. The power of the scriptures comes in the way they tell the story of ordinary people who have found their story of forgiveness, healing, and hope in God’s story.
In her Lenten devotional entry, Sara Pease talks about the Japanese art form called Kintsugi, which is repairing broken pieces by putting them back together with gold. We will be doing something similar with our Lenten community art response by bringing the fabrics that represent the stories of hurt to God and the community and allowing them to be remade into something beautiful.
What story from your life do you need to tell this season so that God can help you make sense of it and begin the journey of forgiveness, healing and hope? Who else is a trusted companion that you can tell your story to who will listen with compassion and love so that you can make sense of it so that the telling can be a part of the ongoing mending of God’s grace in our lives?
Grace and peace,
Pastor Suzanne