The story continues...

This past Monday was my day off. When the weather does not permit golf, I very often spend much of these breaks reading. One of the books I’m currently working my way through is Edward Rutherford’s, London. This historical novel covers several millennia, so it is not what you would call a quick read. In two hours of reading, I can barely notice sign of my progress by the movement of the bookmark.

On the same Monday, I took three of my children plus my newly acquired son-in-law out to the movies. We decided to see Avatar, James Cameron’s high-tech offering about humans encountering a new and enchanting world, appropriately named Pandora. The newly discovered planet’s name should give us some clue of the ominous danger waiting to unfold. But as usual, humans demonstrate their persistently naïve sense of dominion, setting up all the necessary conflict any one movie can process in a little over than two hours.

Thus nicely juxtaposed were these two encounters of narrative escape, one in the traditional form of slowly reading printed words on a page and the other sitting riveted to my seat wearing 3-D glasses. What these two experiences had in common were that they focused upon fictional stories. What separated them is nearly beyond enumeration. Watching Avatar was something approaching entering into an entirely different sense of reality.

Reading a good novel also invites you into an alternative reality, but in an entirely different way. As you read, you become a partner with the author. Your imagination fills in the blanks and fleshes out the particulars. You have no such participation in a movie as engulfing as Avatar. You must passively suspend disbelief and the active engagement of your own imagination. You are simply going along for the ride, albeit a really exciting one.

Will reading printed words on a page become an antiquated hobby one day? I certainly hope not. I take some pride in the fact that all four of my twenty-something offspring are avid readers. But even I read less and less via old media. While I continue to read the daily newspaper cover to cover, I do so on a document reader, not on printed page. I’ve tried reading books on my document reader, but I still enjoy the experience of holding an actual book in my hands and turning the pages. Nevertheless, I’m changing and I’m wondering if all this new technology is changing me. By the way, I have the Bible on my document reader, but I must confess that I do not open it any more often than any of the other Bibles that occupy my bookshelves.

Here is where I wanted to say something about the one unchanging truth in all of this. Humans are creatures drawn to story. We like stories – both the hearing and the telling of them. Where there are humans, there will always be stories in one form or another. The fact that God chose to use story to reach out to us somehow feels right…appropriate. We sit up and pay attention whenever a story begins. Thus, we pay attention to God starts one.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life [John 3:16, NRSV]. So the story begins. We are invited to enter into the story. And God’s story becomes our story.