From the book Pause With Jesus: Encountering His Story in Everyday Life
As we continue our experience of Pause with Jesus, we hope to not live in denial of our own stories. We seek to invite Jesus into our stories, or to realize He’s invited Himself, and to respond to His guidance in our stories.
But how does it really work? How can we take each of these stories and fit them into our own expedition of grace, of redemption, of healing, of life with Christ?
For me, it helps to enter the stories.
I believe in a loving God who welcomes me home—for dinner, for laughter, for an experience, for a conversation, for correction, for a nap.
In these narratives written in an interesting mixture of styles from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we find stories to learn. We read drama to keep. We read various moods and plots, all moving us toward time with Jesus. And that’s what these pages hope to do.
Peek back. Gaze at ancient stories. Enter the creative nonfiction. Stay there. Learn there. See how the lessons apply in the present. Grapple what the meaning in its original context is saying to us in our drive down the road in the rain, in our hustle to the grocery store one more time, in our wide awake late at night world of questions, in our staring at the news stories we wish weren’t being told, in our desire to do the exact opposite of what we know we should do, in our moments when emotions aren’t very pleasant toward another person, in our craving for one more bite of that unhealthy food.
Welcome the stories there. In those moments. Not pushing them out of context—welcoming the context and inviting the large lesson to teach us. Inviting the larger lessons to take us to Jesus.
Not just stories about Him.
Experiences with Him.
