The poet Muriel Ruykeyser said, “the universe is made of stories, not atoms.” I once quibbled with a physicist over this quote.
“That’s ridiculous!” he said. “Without atoms, there is no universe.”
“Without stories, we can’t talk about our experience in the universe,” I explained.
“Without atoms, there’s nothing to experience,” he insisted.
I insisted back, “Without stories, we can’t answer the question, ‘so, how was your day?’”
Stories are the basic unit of human experience. Stories are the building blocks of identity and belonging. Those of us who know ourselves best are probably better in touch with the stories that make us. Family worship is one of the places we learn and wear the stories of faith that shape us.
The Old Testament writers certainly lived in this truth. The bible writers continually reminded the people of their identity by reciting their history in shorthand. There were a couple of formulas the bible writers favored:
They often referred to God as, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Three generations are covered in one tightly constructed title. Whenever the people heard God referred to this way they remembered ALL of Abraham’s story, and ALL of Isaac’s, and ALL of Jacob’s, in a single breath, and they could feel their own stories washed into these other three! So a hearer would think, “My God is the SAME God who was faithful to Abraham, and the SAME God who was faithful to Isaac, and the SAME God who was faithful to Jacob, and this SAME God will be faithful to me, too! He will not break his own precedent.”
Other times the bible writers called God, the LORD your God who brought you up out of Egypt. This nickname was used long after the last survivor of Egypt had died! It was used YEARS past the event as if the hearers were there themselves. Whenever God was named like this, the effect was always the same for the hearers - THAT story came crashing into THEIR stories! They would think to themselves, “The God who brought Israel out of Egypt, is STILL delivering us! The God who toyed with Pharoah can STILL dismantle EVERY oppressor!”
The power of stories to shape us hasn’t changed. What has changed is our understanding of how to use them. So how would we shape our own identity as believers using the bible stories from family worship, or a family worship book like Far From Home? How can we use these stories to remind ourselves we are a saved people awaiting a returning savior?
We can do it by wrapping gospel summaries around the stories we are soaking in. During family worship in Far From Home, maybe we say something like, “We are still far from home, but in Jesus we are not as far as we used to be.” Or, “We are still far from home, but Jesus brings us nearer and nearer to HOME every day.” Or, “We lost the Garden because of sin, but Jesus is bringing us to a NEW Garden with a city woven through it, where there is no sin to spoil or ruin.” The best part is, you don’t have to invent a new summary each time you do family worship! Gospel summaries are meant to be repeated so they can be worn!
Family worship keeps us rooted in the stories that shape us and give us our place in the universe. We’ll leave chasing particles to the physicists.
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