Growing With the Story
By Jeff Bills

When my son was a little boy, he and I would spend some time before bed reading his nighttime story. I shouldn't admit this, but the truth is...I hated it.

I mean once you’ve read The Big Red Dog once, it is hard to go through it again…and again…and again. (And again.)

So, understanding the inherent value of the story time ritual, but growing bored with the children’s books we were reading, I began to make up stories to tell him each night. Very quickly a group of characters emerged. There were four boys. The main character was Willy Wigglepuss. Others came and went, like the bird named Al, who piloted airplanes. And a little sister who always wanted to tag along.

But the four main characters all grew up with my son.

At first, stories about going to the fire station and rolling down big hills were great. But with each growth spurt that Josh experienced,(both physically and intellectually, the boys and their adventures needed to grow as well.

By the time Josh was getting to be too old for this ritual, the stories involved pirate ships, secret tunnels and requests by the President of the United States for the boys to participate in covert operations!

What my son did not know until he got older was that embedded into each of our night time stories was a life lesson. Some were as simple as the importance of treating others with respect. Others had a more complex lesson, such as the nature of courage or how to navigate the pressures and temptations that come with growing up. By the time the stories ended, we would be discussing the lesson of the story more than the details of the adventure.

Reading the Bible is a bit like this.

When I first began reading the Bible, stories like David and Goliath, Jonah and the Whale and the birth of Jesus were wonderful, simple little stories. As I matured, I began to view these as mere fables no different than Gulliver’s Travels.

It wasn’t until I was in college that I began to see my own story of faith, doubt, fear, victory and joy in those stories contained in Scripture. I began to grasp that God is far bigger and his way far more complex than I could ever fathom. Over time, I would grow in my understanding of the life lessons for me that God had embedded in His book.

This is how I fell in love with the Bible.

But more than that, it’s how I came to love the one about whom it is written. S&L

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