Learning God's Story

 As people, we dearly love stories. We like to read stories. We like to watch stories unfold on the small screen (TV) and the big screen (movies). There is just something about a story that captures our attention, draws us into a different place and time, and keeps us focused until the end.

God's story is much the same way, only on a much larger scale. It is a story that has a lot of drama in it, more than a few comedic places, and tension that grips us and keeps us on the edge of our seats. That story also explains a lot about why our world is the way that it is, and how we are best designed to live in this world and among other people.

One of the biggest challenges that we face is finding time to engage God and His story. At a conference I sat in on last fall, one remark that was made was that people almost need a step to take place before they start to read God's story in the Bible. That first step is to learn how to set aside the time to actually be able to read the story. And when we think about our busy schedules and everything that life throws at us, having a guide to help us learn how to even set apart that time is a necessity.

Over the next few weeks, I am going to work with this blog to help us think about ways to set aside a little bit of time to engage God and His story. I'm also going to be suggesting some easy entrance points to reading God's story and learning it. It will be a journey, and just like a journey, it will likely have its unexpected stops and detours along the way. That's okay. Be gracious to yourself if you are following along and find that the road is closed, or that you need to take a quick pitstop. 

To get us started, I want to suggest one thing. Let's start off with something simple. Something that is not too long to read, and that we can find engaging with our attention. I suggest that we start with Psalm 100. It's only a few verses long, and so doesn't take a lot of time to read through. Small steps are good to take as we get the journey going.

So for our first step, I'm simply going to suggest that you read Psalm 100 at some point today. Bookmark it, as we will come back to it as we get this journey underway. And if you find that God gives you a few extra minutes, read on ahead to the next Psalm. But for us as we take our first steps together, let's start small and work our way up. Then, let's check in tomorrow to see what our next step might be together.